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Chapter 465

Drip… drip….

The sky tore apart, and violet viscous fluid began to pour down across various parts of the Heavenly Palace.

The chilling voice belonged to a being I knew well.

The Outer God, Yog.

It had begun its attack on this place.

Watching the masses of corruption raining down from the sky, Michael abandoned his battle with me and shot upward at tremendous speed.

Despite having expended a fair amount of energy in his fight with me just moments ago, his power had not yet lost its depth.

In an instant, a blazing spear imbued with pure white light formed in his hand as he ascended.

At the same time.

Other archangels, whose origin was unknown, took positions at set distances and extended both hands, forming clusters of light.

“Prepare the interception formation. We will block its entry.”

At Michael’s cold command, the other archangels led by Gabriel drew out their power.

With Michael at the center, Gabriel above, and the remaining three archangels below.

As I watched the massive light magic unfold, Luna quickly flew to my side and settled into my arms.

“You’re not hurt anywhere?”

“I’m fine. I was stalling while facing off. Then that thing showed up and Gabriel just left.”

She said that, but she clearly looked quite exhausted.

“Pretty. Your wings.”

At my words, the corner of her lips lifted slightly.

“More importantly, do you know what that thing is doing?”

“Dimensional refraction magic. The restriction barrier we broke probably had the role of preventing the Outer God from locating this heaven.”

“Hmm….”

In other words, because Luna had destroyed it, the Outer God Yog had found the location of heaven through some method.

“Heaven is connected to the outside of dimensions, unlike the Lazarus Continent. That makes it relatively easier for extradimensional invasions.”

“But it was fine until now.”

“It seems they hid the coordinates themselves through dimensional refraction. And when that broke…”

Ah.

The torn rift in the sky gradually widened.

And then.

From within that gap, violet tentacles of an impossible-to-measure size began to wriggle their way in.

A presence so nauseating and repulsive that merely looking at it made one feel sick.

Countless bundles of tentacles.

Grotesque eyeballs revealed themselves across the surfaces of those tentacles.

From forms with a single pupil to those with over ten.

Among them were some that opened like eyes, yet inside were gaping maws holding the abyss.

Even more horrifying was the fact that all of them were staring at the archangels at once.

[Enough hiding. Fragments of God. You all…….]

The being that had been radiating overwhelming presence suddenly stopped speaking, then rolled its eyes as if it had discovered me.

“Leon! You mustn’t look at those eyes!!”

Luna shouted urgently.

And the archangels also halted their magic, trying to block my view.

But.

“What is it?”

I was completely fine even after looking at them.

“Ah, right. Leon, you’re immune.”

It seemed not only the archangels were flustered by the absurd situation.

Though the eyes did not speak, they sent a gaze that seemed to say, Why is this one fine?

Anyway.

I hadn’t expected the archangels to drop everything they were doing the moment the Outer God invaded and gather to stop that thing.

Soon, as the archangels began casting their magic again, chains of light gathered around the torn rift, attempting to stitch it shut as though sewing flesh.

Gwoooooooo…….

The tentacles leaking through the gap emitted strange resonant sounds as they violently resisted.

On the surface, it looked as though the archangels’ powerful magic was overwhelmingly suppressing the monster.

But.

That was only a part of it.

If it were something that could be shaken off so easily, we wouldn’t have suffered this much until now.

A predator devoid of reason or respect, one that simply devours everything.

It eats whatever appears before it, and kills whatever stands before it.

Like an innocent child crushing ants with its fingers.

There was pure malice within it.

To the monster, the world held only that much value.

Crunch… craaack!!!

As it went berserk, massive cracks formed in the archangels’ magic.

And it did not miss the fleeting opening that was created.

The violet tentacles shot out in an instant, targeting Uriel, who held the weakest power.

He had been injured in his earlier battle with me.

Unlike Michael, Uriel, an archangel with three pairs of wings, could not fully resist the attack.

“Ghk?!”

Like a massive rope, it tightly bound Uriel before violently hurling him into one of the Heavenly Palace’s spires.

KWAANG!!!

A tremendous explosion rang out as the massive spire collapsed.

Archangels possessed intangible barriers, but the rank carried by the Outer God Yog was so dense and dark that it felt even higher than that of the archangels.

“Leon!! Take Elpiria and run away!”

It was then.

Watching Uriel’s condition, Gabriel, who had forcefully manifested his power and significantly narrowed the rift once more, shouted toward me.

“Michael!! If this continues, that child will be devoured by it! Release the barrier! Now!”

At his shout, Michael—who had been clashing head-on with Yog at the center of the archangels—snapped his fingers.

The barrier surrounding Elpiria scattered into nothingness.

Without hesitation, Luna and I quickly picked up Elpiria.

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“Get as far away as possible! That child must never be caught by it!”

Luna and I chose to retreat without a second thought.

After all, hadn’t we come to heaven to retrieve Elpiria in the first place?

Though we had to stop by the Heavenly Crystal along the way.

Now was not the time to worry about such things.

Just our luck.

At least Michael could be reasoned with.

That insane monster didn’t have anything like that.

When I turned my head, the archangels paid us no mind, focusing solely on closing the rift while blocking the mass of tentacles trying to force their way through.

“Leon! Over there!”

Throughout the Heavenly Palace, rifts had already torn open, and tentacles of various sizes were emerging, wrapping around and contaminating everything. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Among them, the biggest problem was clearly what Luna pointed at.

The entrance to the Heavenly Palace where we had come through.

There, a blood-colored mist was billowing.

And around it, the ground was cracked as violet tentacles writhed, coiling around the gate Isna had opened.

“That bastard….”

Instinctively, I transformed the divine artifact Pragarach into a sword and slashed through the air.

Invisible sword energy flew forth and cut through the tentacles, but having achieved their purpose, the tentacles completely crushed the gate before disappearing beneath the ground.

With clear intent, it had isolated us here so we could not leave heaven.

A gate, which possessed a non-physical form, being crushed by force?

It made no sense, yet it had just happened before my eyes.

What became clear was that we were now trapped here.

“Hiing… gross….”

Then Grivy, who had been guarding the area, appeared with a tearful face.

It seemed she had tried her best to defend it, but those violet tentacles were something even archangels struggled to block.

Kooong…! Boom!!

From afar, explosive sounds rang out as clusters of pure white light continuously burst across the sky.

And for a long while.

The roars and light only grew stronger.

[---------!!!!!!]

A roar filled with extreme malice struck not the ears, but the soul itself.

The emotion within that roar was unbearably pure malice.

KOOONG!!!

Then, Kamael, who had been confronting it, was flung all the way here, his body riddled with penetrating wounds.

A black, aura-like substance scattered from his body.

“Ghk….”

He groaned, unable to hide his pain, trying to rise, but it didn’t look easy.

Meanwhile, Michael created a massive pillar of light, fiercely burning the tentacles and pressing the gate shut once more.

“…….”

Watching that, I stepped forward with the divine artifact Pragarach in hand.

“Leon!!”

Luna held Elpiria in one arm and tightly grabbed my arm with the other.

“Where do you think you’re going. Absolutely not.”

“If we don’t deal with that, we won’t be able to get out either. I’ll try to make an opening. When I do, you escape through it. You’ve recovered some of your archangel power, right? You can open a gate?”

Outside the Heavenly Palace was nothing but empty sky.

In other words, without a gate, there was nowhere to escape to.

As if she understood my intention, Luna fell silent with a complicated expression.

It was then.

“Uuung…….”

As the child murmured as if having a nightmare, a change began.

The torn rift high in the sky trembled violently.

It wasn’t that someone did something—rather, the space called heaven itself suddenly began exerting immense power.

KOOONG!!!!!!!

And then.

It tore through the tentacle masses, forcibly shutting the gate and beginning to expel the invader.

Starting from the rifts where small tentacles filled the surroundings.

And finally, even the massive rift from which unimaginably huge tentacles protruded.

A massive purification phenomenon occurred, like a dam that had been blocked suddenly breaking open.

Did the archangels cause this?

No.

If that had been possible, they would have done so long ago.

“With the God remaining silent… the dimensional power that constitutes heaven should not be moving….”

Luna muttered in confusion.

The Heavenly Palace was the domain of the archangels.

But the power that maintained this space was separate from them.

And the one who created this space was not the archangels, but the Chief God.

Since the Chief God had fallen silent while rewinding time, heaven should not have had the power to trigger such a purification.

Yet the gate that had resisted all the archangels’ efforts was closed in an instant.

Seeing that, Luna and I turned our gazes in shock toward the one who had done it.

“Elpiria?”

When we looked at Elpiria in surprise, she seemed unaware of anything, burrowing into Luna’s arms with her finger in her mouth, fast asleep.

However, separate from her sleeping state, a faint, unidentified light flowed out around her with a low hum.

It resembled the divinity used by the archangels, yet felt slightly different.

—Khehehehe!! And this is supposed to be the power of archangels? Idiots. Their eyes must be blind.

From within the pendant, Lucifer’s mocking laughter rang out, but I couldn’t respond easily.

“This is… what?”

And. It seemed we weren’t the only ones who had noticed.

Kamael, who had been staggering to his feet, looked at us with a stunned expression.

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