Chapter 356: Ch 356 : The Pearl of Calamity

The air within the Spire of Sins grew stagnant as the Council of the Seven moved through the lightless corridors.

The silence was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic thrumming of the Abyss, the heartbeat of a realm that existed only to consume.

“How is the search for Lom progressing?” Deimos asked.

His voice was a low vibration that seemed to pluck at the threads of reality.

Now that the shock of Belial’s defeat had settled, the focus had shifted. They needed the head of the traitor who had peddled their secrets to the Emperor of the Pantheon.

“I have dispatched every high-tier Demon God available,” Belial replied, his handsome face marred by a twitch of suppressed fury. “They have scoured every inch of the demonic realm. There is not a single trace of his mana signature in the entire demonic realm. It is as if he has ceased to exist.”

“Maybe… he is using that thing,” Maledictus rasped, pulling her tattered, emerald-green hood lower. Her voice carried a tremor of old, deep-seated fear.

“It is not possible,” Phobos, the Lord of Fear, countered sharply. His eyes, twin pits of shifting shadows, locked onto Deimos. “That relic is stored in the Absolute Vault, deep within the Spire’s roots. It is shielded by the blood of seven Lords. Not even a microscopic parasite could bypass the seals, let alone a full-grown Demon God like Lom.”

Deimos stopped. The space around him buckled under the sudden weight of his irritation. “Quit your bickering and open the vault,” he commanded. “We will see if the treasure remains, or if we have been housing a thief in our shadow for a million years.”

The Lords walked in silence behind the towering back of Deimos. Each step was a descent into memory. Their expressions were filled with anger and a past memory that no one wanted to remember.

In the First Era, the Demon Lords were not the kings, instead they were the animals, hunted through the stars by the relentless light of the Gods.

They had fled to the deepest, most corrupted corners of the Demonic Realm, stumbling upon a place that shouldn’t have existed… the Demonic Grounds.

It was a Multiverse within the demonic realm, a pocket dimension of primal chaos filled with treasures that defied description and dangers that could erase a soul.

They had fought ten thousand battles in that dark cradle, honing their SSS-Grade talents against horrors that the Gods would never know.

At the heart of that chaos, they found seven artifacts. These were not mere weapons; they were the peak of what could be manifested within the bubble. Each one was a conceptual anchor, a tool of absolute authority.

Under the direction of Beelzebub, who was the strongest among them at the time, each Lord bound one relic to their soul.

Deimos had chosen the Pearl of Calamity.

It was an artifact with the authority over space. It allowed the wielder to hide within the folds of reality, the microscopic gaps between dimensions where even the gaze of a void born God could not penetrate.

As Deimos became familiar with the Pearl, he realized its terrifying potential. It didn’t just hide the user; it allowed him to whisper into the ears of reality itself, sowing the seeds of discord without ever being seen.

But the artifacts possessed a glaring, parasitic flaw. They were “Hungry Relics.” To function at the peak of their conceptual power, they fed on the user’s own essence.

Deimos found that while he wielded the Pearl, the Discord he harvested from the reality was halved. The artifact took 50% of his power as a tax for its services.

For over a million years, the Lords hoarded these treasures, their growth stunted by the very items that kept them safe.

Finally, it was Beelzebub who suggested a change in strategy.

“Why should we, the Lords, be diminished by these tools?” Beelzebub had argued. “Let us select the most loyal among our followers. Let them be the wielders. They will serve as our hands. Even if the artifact takes half their power, a Demon God with 50% of an SSS-Grade relic is still a force of nature.”

And so, the Relic-Bearers were chosen. Deimos’s trusted subordinate became the pilot of the Pearl of Calamity.

Through this proxy, Deimos sowed the discord that ignited the Great War, toppling the Gods. It was the spark that gave Deimos the dream of ruling both realms.

Because of the authority over space, of the Pearl of Calamity, every demon lord ofter used the bearer of the pearl as their driver, which led to the creation of a bond. A bond between a demon god and all the demon lords.

He became the favourite demon god, blessed by all of them, he became the spokesperson of the demon lords.

But the Demon Lords had forgotten one fundamental truth: that demons were ambitious creatures.

One day, shortly after the Gods were perished, Deimos’s subordinate was found dead. The Pearl of Calamity was gone.

Deimos had searched every rift and every moon, but found nothing. He was looking for someone with the Pearl… and the Pearl allowed the killer to be nowhere and everywhere at once.

Eventually, a young, ambitious Demon God arrived at the Spire. He didn’t come to return the artifact; he came to announce his ascension.

“I killed your servant,” the demon had said, standing boldly before Deimos. “He was becoming too close to you. I couldn’t bear the thought of a weakling standing in your shadow while I possessed the strength to be your servant better than he ever could.”

“He was your brother,” Deimos had whispered, his aura flickering with a cold fury.

“He was an obstacle,” the demon replied.

Deimos had killed the usurper on the spot, his wrath shattering the demon’s soul into a million fragments.

In a moment of disgust and grief for his lost servant and maybe a friend, Deimos had locked the Pearl of Calamity away in the Absolute Vault.

He had decreed that no one would ever wield it again. He would have destroyed it, but even the combined power of the Seven could not break a relic from the Demonic Grounds.

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