My Dear, You're Dead

"Within order!"

Keir's voice suddenly rang out like a great bell.

He pressed a snow-white fist to his forehead. Holy light poured from his entire body as he floated upward.

Then he vanished from the air.

Sixteen white afterimages instantly appeared around the outer edge of the Law Field Energy Chamber—Keir's figures, racing along the chamber walls at incredible speed.

The eight rune pillars, the continuous spell formation on the ground, and the transparent gemstone mana ring flared to life once more. This time, they shone with dazzling white light of order, gathering toward the center.

"Stand on it." Keir's voice came from the left, then the right, then ahead, then behind.

Ichaint clenched the golden horn chain in his palm, beat his wings once, and landed lightly on the black diamond platform.

All the light fell upon him. He began to radiate light as well.

He understood what Keir was doing.

Aside from altering the initial state, path, and final state, Keir's method of transfiguration also required combining them under the environmental conditions of the corresponding domain.

To become an existence of the domain of order, he naturally needed an environment governed by order.

As a demon, Ichaint naturally had no Law Field Energy Chamber containing the energy of order among his collection of structures. Keir could only settle for the next best thing: using the most easily manipulated and malleable law energy as guidance, and himself as the energy source, to create an order field.

"Now, you may make your promise." A solemn voice echoed through the chamber.

The white afterimages never ceased. Order overflowed from Keir's body, part of it dispersing through the air, part of it flowing along the continuous spell formation—the eight rune pillars—the gemstone mana ring, converging at the center.

Faint panting. The angel's energy was steadily draining away.

"I promise..."

The door slammed open. "Teacher!" Nese shouted, breathless.

Let me finish this sentence... "I promise..."

Boom!!!!!!

A massive cracking sound came from nearby.

The lights went out. Ichaint's vision suddenly darkened.

The rune pillars, spell formation, and mana ring went dark. With no source or support, the order in the air rapidly dissipated.

The white afterimages circling the entire energy chamber vanished.

Ichaint leaped from the black diamond rune platform like the wind and rushed toward Keir—the angel lay face-down on the floor, one wing spread open and the other tightly drawn in—a scarlet spear as thick as a calf had thrust down through the ceiling, shattered his shoulder blade, and pinned him to the ground.

The spear was not Beelzebub's weapon. Someone else had come.

"Did you finish?" Keir seemed not to have processed what had happened. He spoke dully, instinctively reaching with his other hand for his mangled shoulder—unable to reach it.

Without the order field created by Keir, the transfiguration could not be completed...

Ichaint said nothing. Rubble kept striking him. He glanced upward, seeing cracks rapidly spread across the ceiling.

Clang!

He swung his hand, trying to chop through the scarlet spear. The shaft did not snap, did not even bend. It merely gained a black mark.

This spear.

Who came...

A sickening sensation crawled into his heart. The vibrating wings of countless flies began to fill his mind, while it felt as though a dull file behind his head were scraping downward along his skull.

Beelzebub's rank suppression ignored distance, descending directly upon the demon part still remaining within him.

Perhaps she felt the spear's owner alone was not enough to kill him.

"My dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear..." The flies' voices swelled like bubbles. Unexpectedly, every word was crisp and clear.

No words formed before Ichaint's eyes, yet he could still hear every one of them.

"My dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear..."

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts."

The scarlet spear twisted from side to side, then withdrew, leaving a wide spear-hole in the ceiling. The angel's silver blood splashed across the floor as though a bucket had been overturned, while a string of undignified cries escaped his mouth.

Crack—crack!

Following the spear-hole, the cracked and precarious ceiling split open into a gap three feet wide.

Within the gap, a flickering mass of black and red revealed a fist-sized protruding eye. The eye had no pupil, its white filled with blood vessels.

"Teacher! Angel!"

Nese ran over, his face deathly pale.

That huge bulging eye swiftly moved away. Ichaint hurriedly flicked his fingers, sending Nese and Keir flying. The sorcerer and angel trailed gleaming streaks of blood as they crashed into a pile of marrowstone, scattering it and burying themselves within.

Shhk!

The scarlet spear plunged into the spot where Nese had been standing. Spiderweb cracks spread through the ground, and the air suddenly became chokingly foul.

Having missed once, the spear was instantly pulled back.

The eye appeared at the gap again, then was replaced by four fangs.

The fangs opened and closed, and a voice like muffled thunder leaked down through the gap:

"Ichaint. I have come to clear obstacles for Lord Beelzebub."

"Let her come herself," Ichaint said with a cough.

The air became abnormally murky. Keir and Nese began coughing incessantly from the other side as well.

A low, cold laugh scraped against everyone's eardrums.

"You are not worthy of making demands. I hope you understand what you are. I believe I already said it. An obstacle."

The fangs moved aside. This time, four glossy fingers appeared—because the crack could only fit those four fingers.

"Take that useless thing and run."

It took Nese half a second to realize Ichaint was speaking to him.

"Use whatever means you have. There's plenty of energy here. Those methods of yours involving concealment, transformation, and planes. Use them as hard as you can."

"Teacher!"

"I'm confident."

**Crack—**the sound of breaking.

**Crack, crack, crack, crack—**more breaking sounds.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Crash...

Those four fingers pried the ceiling apart to both sides, and the entire room began to shake. Without looking back, Ichaint knew the rune pillars he had personally designed, selected materials for, carved, and enchanted were collapsing one after another behind him.

"My dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear... You're not going anywhere, not going anywhere..."

Centipedes were biting his heart while flies laughed uproariously in his mind.

A flash of light flickered in the corner.

From the corner of his eye, Ichaint saw only a chaotic pile of marrowstone at the end of the silver blood trail, along with several law symbols slowly fading away.

Nese and Keir had already teleported away.

Ink-like liquid dripped onto him. The moment it touched his skin, it began to smoke.

Turning around, he saw the massive shadow of a demon slowly emerge from the divided ceiling. Thick claws, fangs, and a pair of bloodshot bulging eyes appeared before him.

There were also shoulders, black and glossy like a bridge, with another pair of thick, muscular arms growing from them—human arms, only seven or eight times the size of an ordinary person's. They tightly gripped that scarlet spear—

—and twisted.

Murky smoke burst out in every direction.

Within the smoke, only that scarlet spear shone. And a pair of stalactite-like bull horns—burning atop the demon's head.

"Fighting and killing don't suit me." Ichaint suddenly recalled Keir's words.

And they suit me?

He touched the hilt of the blade at his waist and wound the golden horn chain tightly around his arm.

Then he leaped through the crack in the ceiling.

The sky had already turned completely black.

The backward-flowing sulfur river carved the night sky into jagged fragments.

He glanced upward. Several enormous breaches had opened in the mana dome, and countless low-ranked demons poured in through them like a tide.

Looking down, he saw rings of demon soldiers surrounding every finely carved disasterstone statue, working together to pull them down.

The sounds of falling, the sounds of shattering. Expensive sounds of shattering. Every one was three months of his painstaking labor.

The entire floating island was filled with red light. Endless burning red light, like Burning Fire Valley.

He stopped before the demon's arrogant face.

The mana dome overhead could no longer bear the strain. It suddenly retreated to both sides, exposing an opening.

A rain of chaotic fire mixed with sharp stones poured over him.

"Ichaint. I bring the 663rd through 666th Hell Legions to bring you your end." The bull-headed demon grinned savagely, raising the spear with its two human arms.

The scarlet spear was mottled with silver streaks—the angel's blood. Ink-like black water dripped from its tip.

"My dear... you're going to die... My strongest subordinate will uphold injustice for Chaos Hell... I'm so sad... truly..." the flies in his mind said.

Shut up, Beelzebub.

He stared into the demon's murky eyes.

"Is that so? Yifomiet, Hand of Destruction. It's an honor to meet you."

Yifomiet's earlier appearances can be found in Chapters 1–2. He was mentioned a little.