Chapter 672 - The King of Hell

Gouts of lava exploded from the moat of lava surrounding the chamber.  Something swam among the molten rock, but from the pressure it exerted on the environment, Zeke knew he didn’t want to challenge it. 

In truth, the same could be said for the devil standing in the center of the platform that dominated the chamber.  The floor was all black, with fire separating the onyx tiles, and there were huge braziers that belched black smoke into the air. 

“Come, traveler.  Test your might,” the devil rumbled.  It was enormous – at least a hundred feet tall – and built like a red-skinned bodybuilder with sweeping horns, cloven feet, and black scars crisscrossing its chest.  Surrounding its wrists were thick chains, many of the links broken and dangling. 

When the devil moved, they clinked together and the chamber shooks.

Zeke knew that he had no choice in the matter.  The creature was more powerful than him, but that was nothing new.  He’d fought gods.  He’d been ripped to pieces more times than he could count.  He could take whatever that thing could dish out.

However, just because he could survive and continue fighting, that didn’t mean he was looking forward to it.  He could survive just about anything, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, and more than he could adequately describe.  Yet, hesitation would get him nowhere. 

So, he stepped forward.

The first thing he felt was the heat.  For anyone else, it likely would have fried them to a crisp, but due to his unique cambion constitution, Zeke had no issues handling it.  In fact, it felt almost comfortable after the frigid temperatures he’d experienced in the Circle of Treachery. 

Connecting the tunnel where he’d entered to the platform was a long staircase.  Embedded in the black stone were innumerable bones, each one charred and bearing hundreds of runes.  Zeke felt a pull on the divine energy in his core, but he had no difficulty resisting. 

“Ah, you bear the divine within you,” the devil rumbled.

“So do you,” Zeke said, not bothering to raise his voice.  The thing would hear him.  He was certain of that much.

“I am a god, traveler.”

“You’re just another monster,” Zeke stated.  “And you’re in my way.  Step aside, and I won’t destroy you.  Stand in my path, and you will be trampled.  Those are your options.  Make a choice.”

For a long moment, the chamber was silent but for the occasional geyser that threw drops of molten rock across the platform.  A few hit Zeke’s shoulders, but he barely felt their heat.  Instead, he was focused entirely on the creature looming over him. 

Unfortunately, that required him to crane his neck.

Finally, the devil let out a deep, rumbling laugh.  The entire chamber shook with his mirth before he said, “You will trample me?  I am a god, you insect.  You will not –”

Zeke used [Shifting Sands], embracing the divine energy within him even more fully than he ever had before.  It rushed through him with enough further that, when he’d begun his journey, it would have burned him to ash.  Now, it wasn’t even uncomfortable.  Apparently, hundreds of years’ worth of letting it course through him was enough to inoculate him from its ill effects. 

More importantly, when the skill took effect, time stopped.  This time, Zeke didn’t simply step forward.  Instead, he threw himself at the monster’s leg, and with every ounce of strength he could muster.  His body erupted in a corona of white light as he darted through the air.

The devil moved.  It was little more than a twitch, but it was evidence of the creature’s power. 

But it wasn’t nearly enough.

Zeke crashed into its shin with an explosion of divine energy and force.  The latter shattered the devil’s leg.  The sound of breaking bones and rupturing skin filled the air, but that was the least of the effects.  Zeke focused his divine energy into his fist, releasing it upon impact. 

The monster’s leg ceased to exist.

It didn’t explode.  It wasn’t vaporized.  Upon the release of that much divine energy, it simply vanished.  The lack of resistance meant that, as soon as the skill ended a moment later, Zeke found himself sailing through the air toward the edge of the chamber.  He hit the platform hard, barely managing to catch himself before tumbling into the fiery lava below. 

The devil wasn’t so lucky.

With hits leg, he was suddenly unbalanced, and he didn’t have time to regain his poise before tipping over.  There was nothing onto which he could catch himself, so he hit the ground hard enough to send a crack snaking down the center of the platform. 

He roared in pain and rage.

Zeke ignored him, because he’d already reversed directions.  He didn’t have [Shifting Sands] available, but now that the monster had been cut down to size – at least temporarily – he liked his chances.  He hit the monster’s back with every ounce of momentum he could muster. 

And the result was shattering ribs.  More importantly, its red skin ruptured as those broken bones erupted from below.  Zeke hammered the huge monster again and again, eliciting one howl of pain after another.

Then, he leaped forward, latching onto the edge of the devil’s horn.  Without even thinking about the ridiculousness of what he intended, he heaved and spun.  The devil was the size of an office building, and Zeke was only a little bigger than an average man.  However, he had no difficulty lifting the thing’s head.  And when he started to spin, the force of his conceptual strength forced its body aloft.

Soon enough, he was spinning around like he was preparing for an Olympic hammer throw.  And then, after a few revolutions, he released the creature.  It flew through the air, hitting the chamber’s wall only a moment later, and with enough force to shatter even more bones. 

Even as it slipped down into the lava, Zeke threw himself at the injured monster.  He landed directly on its face, and as he hammered the creature in the head, he felt divine energy surging through him even more ferociously than ever before.  At first, he didn’t even notice, but then, he became alarmed. 

That’s when he realized that the cage had broken.

His skills were now available.  As was his status.  He was once again reconnected to the Framework.  However, he chose to ignore it.  He didn’t need his skills to finish the monster off. 

Zeke had no idea how long he’d been in hell.  His sense of time had become so skewed that it had progressed far beyond unreliability.  But it felt like centuries.  And in that time, he’d endured so much pain – psychological and physical – that it had nearly broken him. 

No matter how many times he killed monsters or descended to another circle, he never truly had the chance to let loose in a substantive way.  But now, he felt each hammering blow right down to his soul.  It felt real.  Solid. 

Cathartic.

His fists descended with enough force to level mountains, but the devil, for all that he’d caught it unaware, was durable.  Zeke never let it recover, but he knew it would take some time before he managed to put it down. 

He lost track of how many times he hit it.  At some point, he’d screamed himself hoarse.  But with so much divine energy rushing through him, his voice never really wavered.  The first sign that he was on the verge of victory came when, with a loud cracking sound, he ruptured the devil’s skull.  A few more punches, and it split open like a melon, revealing its brain. 

Zeke didn’t hesitate to continue his assault, though the squishy grey matter was far less durable than bone.  Every descending punch turned a piece of the monster’s brain to gooey mush.  Zeke kept going until, at last, the thing was dead. 

Only then did he look up. 

He was waist-deep in the lava, though he couldn’t feel the heat.  Exhaustion that had built over the entire descent settled onto his shoulders, and, with some degree of sluggishness, he climbed free of the lava and headed to the center of the platform. 

There stood a gate. 

Like the rest of the chamber, it was made of onyx, and there were tiny rivers of lava running between the seams. 

For a moment, Zeke wondered if it was too easy.  It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been tricked, after all.  He’d spent years in the Circle of Fraud, believing obvious lies.  When he looked back on it, that betrayal still hurt, and he knew none of it was real.  So, he knew good and well he wasn’t above believing a lie.

But he didn’t have any other choices.  There were no other exits.  No other monsters to defeat.  He’d reached the end of his descent, and yet, he couldn’t force himself to take that last step forward. 

Was it regret?

Fear?

Both had merit.  Zeke had so many regrets that he couldn’t even begin to count them all.  Yet, he was afraid, too.  What would he do if he stepped out into the next realm, only to discover that everything he’d built was gone?  That all of his friends and family were dead?  Had centuries passed out there, the same as they had in hell? 

If so, everything would be different.

He wasn’t ready to confront that very real possibility.  But as had been his mantra since the very beginning, he told himself that he had no choice in the matter.  He could either keep going or give up.  Only, in this case, giving up meant being trapped in that chamber for all of eternity.

So, without further deliberation, he took that final step and passed through the onyx arch and into a new realm. 

Or that was what he expected.

Instead, a moment later, he blinked at his surroundings.  It was a garden.  A beautiful one, to be sure, but a garden nonetheless.  Populated by a host of greenery, with colorful and blooming flowers, it even smelled like spring, though with a hint of moisture in the air.  Like it had just rained.

Zeke felt his shoulders droop. 

“I’m sorry,” came a voice from behind him.

Zeke turned to see Oberon standing there.  The dwarf was still just as short and stout as ever, with heavy shoulders and a beard made of grass and leaves.  His skin even had a bark-like texture to it.  Had it always been that way?  Or was he seeing something new? 

“For what?” Zeke croaked.  His voice might not have suffered from all that screaming, but it was incredibly dry.  “Am I truly here?  Or is this some sort of construct?”

He looked closer, seeing the hints of divine energy flowing through everything. 

“A little of both, I’m afraid.  And I’m sorry because I never expected your descent to be so difficult.”

“It’s hell.  Of course it would be hard.”

“You have been leaking divine energy throughout the Pit,” Oberon stated.  “It empowered each scenario well past their normal levels.  The degree of punishment you’ve been forced to endure…if I knew that was what would happen, I never would have suggested this route.”

“I thought you said that going the normal way was dangerous, that my enemies would be waiting on me.”

“That’s true, but if you could endure what you just went though, then there’s no reason to believe you wouldn’t have emerged victorious,” Oberon explained. 

“You knew I had divine energy in me.”

“I did.”

“But you were still surprised.”

“I was.”

“Why?” Zeke asked.  “What changed?  What was so different that it threw off your expectations?”

“Do you know how divine energy works?”

Zeke shook his head.

“The simplest way to explain it is to say that no god can exist without worshipers,” Oberon stated.  “The most powerful among us – at least in terms of divine energy – have entire kingdoms worshipping them.  That gives them a steady stream of divine energy.  There are other factors, of course.  The level of devotion, the number of worshipers – etcetera.  The point is that your kobolds – lovely creatures, by the way – are incredibly devoted.  And they breed quite quickly.  One could almost say that they are perfectly built to feed you divine energy. 

“Ironically,” he went on.  “That divine energy was both the source of your problems and the solution.  Without it, you would have broken through each circle of Hell without difficulty.  But with it, your path was much more difficult, and the only reason you were able to progress was due to the sheer amount of divine energy flowing through you.  You broke through my cage much more quickly than I could have expected.”

“They…they worship me?”

“They do.  Very, very much so.  But you will see what has changed soon enough.  In the meantime, there is something very important you need to address.  So, without further ado –”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“How long?”

“We will be finished here soon enough, and you will –”

“No.  How long have I been in here?” Zeke asked.  “It felt…like hundreds of years.  Maybe more.  I don’t know.  It was…it was difficult to concentrate at times, and I lost track…”

Oberon blinked.  Then, he frowned.  “The Pit features a ten-to-one ratio of time dilation.  For every ten seconds that pass there, one will pass in the other realms.”

“So, if I spent ten years in there, only one would have passed for my friends?”

“Just so.”

“How long, then?”

“You have been in here for more than a thousand years, Zeke,” Oberon stated.  “One-hundred and fifteen years have passed for your friends.”

That news hit Zeke like a ton of bricks.  It wasn’t unexpected, but having it confirmed was a real gut punch, and one that shattered his resolve.  He fell to his knees, then tipped forward onto his hands before vomiting. 

Idly, he was aware of Oberon patting his back, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.  An entire century, gone.  He asked the inevitable question.  “Are they still alive?”

“Mostly,” Oberon said.  “I…I am sorry, but we don’t have time for you to come to grips with what happened.  You must choose your class evolution before proceeding with that last few steps of your journey.”