Chapter 267: Ch 267 : The Start of The War

In a random multiverse, Ichor, the Demon Lord of Corrosion, floated on his back. He was bored.

Around him, the skeletal remains of lifeforms drifted aimlessly, their cores dissolved into corrosive slime, the entire multiverse felt corrosive.

He flicked a finger, and a nearby planet melted into a puddle of sludge in seconds. It was effortless.

“I am bored,” Ichor groaned, his voice vibrating through the multiverse, “We haven’t found a single God in the last three years. They are all… gone. Let’s return to the capital. At least there, I can corrode something that screams.”

Beside him, Maledictus, the Lady of Curses, sat cross-legged on the fabric of space itself.

Her eyes, pools of swirling darkness, were fixed on the distant expanse of the multiverse.

“We have killed more than five hundred Gods, Ichor,” she replied, her voice a dangerous whisper. “Do you not find it suspicious? Five hundred dead… yet the number of Gods left to kill are still soo many, it’s like they are popping out of nowhere”

“I believe we must expand our search. We must scour every multiverse. We must kill every lifeform with even the potential to become a God. The weeds are growing too fast.”

“What about the runners?” Ichor spat, sitting up. His slimy form pulsed with irritation. “Thousands of them. They slipped through our fingers before we could even crush their skulls. I do not like it. My toys are not supposed to run away.”

“I have sent a few thousand Demon Gods to hunt them,” Maledictus assured him. “They are searching every crack. But Ichor… it is strange.”

She frowned, a terrifying expression on her face. “The barriers between multiverses… they used to be absolute. Traps designed to keep fledgling Gods isolated until we could harvest them. But now? They seem like wet paper. These new Gods are passing through them as if they aren’t even there. Someone or something has unlocked these doors.”

The two Demon Lords fell silent, drifting through the wreckage they had created, moving toward their next target. They hoped this next one wouldn’t run. They hoped for a fight.

Meanwhile, deep in the heart of the Demonic Realm, in the capital city of demons, the atmosphere was heavy with a different kind of tension.

The five remaining Demon Lords sat around the table of dragon bone.

A holographic report, sent by Maledictus, floated in the center, displaying a map of the known cosmos. It was riddled with red lines, the escape paths of the fleeing Gods and their last sight.

“How is this possible?” Phobos, the Lord of Fear, whispered. “Thousands of them… escaping our grasp simultaneously. This should not be happening. We must do something, or our livestocks will revolt.”

“What can we do?” Beelzebub, the Lord of Gluttony, rumbled. “We have sent the Demon God armies. But many of them… are dying. Disappearing. Maledictus is right. Something, or someone, is orchestrating this.”

“It cannot be a coincidence,” Malakai, the Lord of Despair, added, his voice a dry rustle. “Things do not spiral out of control this quickly without a catalyst.”

At the head of the table, Deimos, the Lord of Discord, finally spoke. He had been silent, studying the map.

“You are all looking at the small picture,” Deimos said, his voice calm, authoritative, and chilling. “You see scattered rats running from a sinking ship. I see the flow.”

“Small picture?” Belial asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Look at the map,” Deimos commanded. “Look at the direction. Where are they all running to?”

He traced a line with his finger. The thousands of red trails, representing the fleeing Gods from the Card Universe, the Cultivation Universe, and a hundred others, were not scattering randomly.

They were moving in the same direction. They were all streaming toward a single, blindingly bright point in the cosmic map.

The biggest multiverse. The multiverse of Gods.

“They are heading to him,” Phobos realized, a flicker of genuine unease passing through his aura. “Isn’t this… bad? I heard this Cosmos has already been found killing our Demon Gods. If these thousands of refugees join him… if they mix their powers with his…”

“Do you think it is easy for Gods to coexist?” Deimos scoffed, leaning back in his throne.

“Different backgrounds. Different races. Different power systems. A Cultivator God hates a Magic God. A Tech God despises a Beast God. Even if they gather in one place, they will be a chaotic mess.”

He smiled, a cruel twist of lips. “And discord? That is my domain. It will be child’s play to sow hatred among them. They will destroy each other before we even arrive.”

“But the Old Gods,” Phobos countered, “They were diverse too. Humans, elves, dragons. Yet they fought us as a united front for a million years. How are you so sure these new ones won’t do the same?”

“Because the Old Gods were Void-born,” Deimos replied instantly. “They shared a lineage. They were siblings of the same source”

“These new ones? They are orphans. They have lost their worlds. They have lost their believers. They have no Faith, no home, and no purpose. They are desperate, starving refugees.”

Deimos’s eyes gleamed with a strategic light. “And do you think this Cosmos is running a charity? From what I have heard, he is a tyrant of his own making”

“He will not simply give them universes to farm Faith. He isn’t that charitable. They will be resource-starved and desperate. They will turn on him, or he will enslave them. Either way, they are weak.”

The table fell silent. Deimos’s logic was sound. A refugee crisis usually led to collapse, not strength.

But then, Beelzebub swallowed his mouthful of meat from a ancient race and spoke.

“You may be right about their nature, Deimos,” the Gluttony Lord rumbled. “But you are forgetting one thing. One flavor that overpowers all others.”

“And what is that?”

“Hatred,” Beelzebub said, his eyes burning with a dark intensity. “We didn’t just chase them away. We killed their families. We tortured their children. We burned their ancestral homes to ash. We cut off their Faith by slaughtering their worshipers.”

He looked around the table. “They have nothing left to lose. And they all have one enemy in common. Us”

“Hatred is a powerful binding agent, Deimos. Stronger than discord. If this Cosmos gives them a way to hurt us… they will take it. They will unite under the banner of Vengeance.”

The silence in the hall deepened. The Demon Lords looked at the map again. The red lines no longer looked like fleeing prey.

They looked like arrows, aiming at them.

Deimos considered this. He tapped his claw on the armrest of his throne.

“If they join,” he said finally, a terrifying grin spreading across his face, “then we will simply squash them all together. It is efficient. It isn’t like we haven’t fought billions of Gods before.”

He stood up. The shadows of the hall seemed to lengthen, bowing to his will.

“I guess the time for games is over,” Deimos declared. “It is time to act. Send the signal. Call Maledictus and Ichor back immediately. We march when they return.”

He chuckled, a sound that promised the end of worlds. “My favorite part is finally here. The killing. The breaking. The discord. We will end this little rebellion, and when the dust settles, I will be the only one standing.”

The Demon Lords rose, one after another. Their auras flared, shaking the foundations of the capital city.

They had an army to prepare. Millions of Demon Gods, bred and trained over a million years of waiting, were about to be unleashed.

They were going to war. And the blood of Gods, the sweetest drink in the multiverse would soon flow like rivers.

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