103: Chapter 103 Demon King, Goetia

"No... wait, what's going on?"

PD stared blankly at the glaring system notification on the screen. His brain, which had been racing with excitement from the high-intensity raids, felt as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over it.

He instinctively tried to find any sign of his teammates on the interface.

But... there were none!

The reassuring [Four-Player Deployment Zone] at the bottom of the screen, the dense [20-Player Raid List] on the side, and even the flashing [Full-Screen Tactical Communication] icon in the top right corner...

They had all vanished!

It wasn't that they had turned grey and offline; they had been completely erased from the UI's physical layer!

It was so clean it made his skin crawl.

The entire game screen instantly reverted to the most primitive, desolate single-player interface. It was as if the grand, bustling celebration just now had been nothing but an illusory dream, and now, the dream was over.

Not just PD, but at this very moment, countless players who had just been filled with ecstasy, bringing their max-level Servants to trample The Throne, encountered the same forced disconnection after clicking into the final node named [The Throne].

"Old Thief Gu... you're not playing by the rules at all, you bastard!"

PD swallowed hard as a strong sense of unease welled up in his heart.

Players accustomed to "calling for whales when in doubt" had already developed a severe dependency after over five hours of collective revelry. Now, they were suddenly told that for the final boss, there would be no teammates to help tank damage, no crowd control to stop the flying insects, and no one to help break those disgusting shields.

Everything had returned to the very beginning.

As the sole Master, they had to face that despair-inducing existence alone.

"What's there to be afraid of? I didn't spend the last few hours grinding for nothing!"

PD grit his teeth, forcing himself to be brave. "A maxed-out Jeanne d'Arc plus max-skill dual supports! Even without defense shred or damage amplification, I can still blast this Demon God King into oblivion with raw stats!"

He slammed the confirmation button.

Accompanied by an uncomfortable sensation of spatial distortion, the screen was swallowed by a heavy darkness.

When his vision returned, PD found himself standing before a grand throne constructed from countless dark-gold magic circuits.

In the depths of this vast, boundless sea of stars, there was no clamor from the peripheral Demon God Pillars, only a deathly silence.

The only one by his side was the young girl holding a massive cross shield—Mash—who, despite her body trembling slightly, still stood firmly at the very front to protect him.

And atop that high throne, the man who called himself "Solomon" was looking down at them with a gaze devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

"How regrettable. It seems your meaningless revelry ends here."

The man's voice echoed through the empty temple, carrying the indifference of a higher being scrutinizing lower lifeforms.

"You've worked hard to reach this place, Master of Chaldea. Your struggle for survival, like that of insects, is indeed commendable."

He looked down at PD and Mash, his lips curling into a mocking sneer. "But did you think destroying those peripheral Demon God Pillars used to maintain the temple could stop the advent of the Incineration of Humanity? They were but a few flakes of skin shed from this body of mine."

Following his cold words, the man's robes began to flutter without wind. Then, the physical body belonging to "King Solomon" actually began to melt and boil like wax!

The existence on The Throne emitted a dull, overlapping echo, as if countless mouths were speaking simultaneously.

"I am the Magical Foundation created by King Solomon, yet awakened within the remains he discarded. I am the 'Curse' itself, awakened by the ugliness and depravity of you humans."

Under the horrified gazes of all players, the spirit origin reaction belonging to King Solomon instantly vanished from the radar. It was replaced by a terrifying energy source that sent every alarm in the Chaldea Control Room screaming into the red, powerful enough to distort space itself!

His body was wrapped in countless twisted dark-gold magic circuits, rapidly expanding and mutating into a massive, non-human monster.

Dark red light gathered in his asymmetrical, terrifying chest, forming a deep black hole like a giant eye gazing at the universe.

Those eyes that once belonged to a human had now turned into dark-gold vertical pupils, devoid of reason and filled only with pure destructive desire.

"I am the Grand Order of the seventy-two almighty Demon Gods."

"The one who holds the name of Solomon, yet swore to incinerate your worthless human history to reach the pole star—Beast I."

That massive, twisted, and suffocatingly oppressive alien form completely filled the screen!

"My name is..."

"The Demon God King, Goetia!"

The moment those words fell.

Accompanied by the sudden blast of a heavy, despairing BGM, the battle interface officially loaded!

"Stop acting mysterious! I don't care if you're the Demon God King or whatever. If you're brave enough to show a health bar, I'm brave enough to kill you!"

PD's eyes were bloodshot. He didn't give the opponent a chance to talk, starting with his most violent combo.

Merlin's skills were fully activated, Zhuge Liang's Discernment of the Spirit was applied, and Jeanne d'Arc, amidst a burst of violent black flames and backed by the best supports around, smashed toward Goetia's throne like a devastating shadow meteor!

This was the invincible combo PD had used to one-shot Barbatos in the raid just now!

"Die!!"

BOOM—!!!

Intense light from the explosion swallowed the entire screen, and damage numbers popped up.

However, when the dust settled, the expression on PD's face instantly froze.

[-1]

[-4]

[-0]

...

That grand and magnificent Noble Phantasm attack hit Goetia, but the numbers that floated up were all single-digit scratch damage!

And Goetia's terrifyingly thick health bar, which seemed to have no end, didn't even twitch!

"This... this is impossible!" PD gasped, his hands and feet turning cold.

"Boring struggle."

Goetia, still on The Throne, didn't even stand up. He merely raised a single finger.

A beam of light pierced through the entire battlefield at a speed invisible to the naked eye.

*Snap.*

On PD's field, the previously majestic, full-health Jeanne d'Arc, along with the defensive buffs on her, shattered like a fragile glass toy into a shower of light and dissipated on the spot!

A one-shot!

An absolute one-shot with no room for logic!

"Holy shit..."

At this moment, not just PD, but every player across the internet who had entered [The Throne] fell into a deathly silence.

They watched helplessly as their meticulously raised, maxed-out Servants—who usually steamrolled everything—turned to ash one by one under Goetia's casual attacks, as if he were swatting flies.

"Let this farce end."

Goetia looked down coldly at the struggling players and slowly raised both hands.

The next second, the game's perspective zoomed out sharply, switching to Earth's high orbit.

It was the beautiful and brilliant band of light that had been encircling the Earth. All players had thought it was just some grand background scenery.

But now, Goetia's cold and arrogant voice rang in every player's ear like a death sentence:

"What did you think that ring encircling the sky was?"

"That is a band of light reaching hundreds of millions of degrees. It is the ultimate heat refined and condensed by burning away all of human history, all of civilization, and all life over the past thousands of years."

"This is the fuel necessary to reach the pole star, for my great work of 'Recreating Genesis'."

Faced with this chilling truth, players across the internet were completely stunned.

That wasn't scenery; it was the ashes left behind after all of humanity had been burned!

"Now, under this heat that can pierce even planets, turn to ash along with your worthless struggles."

Under the despairing gaze of all players, the band of light—the gathered ashes of thousands of years of human civilization—turned into countless scorching torrents capable of piercing the planet's surface and crashed down toward the players' tiny, dust-like positions before The Throne!

[The Time of Birth has Come, He is the One who Corrects All (Ars Almadel Salomonis)!!]