Chulainn's three heads howled and his muscles contracted. He then lowered his gaze and glowered at Karaskan with his body tilted forward. The next instant, the ground burst with a loud noise and his big figure disappeared.
Karaskan's eyes narrowed and looked up. Chulainn's was already up in the air, with his three mouths ready to launch their magic. The first head was ready to breathe an unstoppable fire, the second one had lava flowing up its throat and the middle head surprisingly carried light energy.
Karaskan squinted his eyes and chanted too, "[Resurrection]." His Manifestation's activation was extremely fast compared to Chulainn. Absolute darkness gathered around him to form something like a spherical shield as Kerberos howled and spat out his three-colored magic.
The colors of white, crimson, and dark red merged to become gorgeous and sparkling flames. The wave of fire was about to clash with the darkness when the sky suddenly cracked and an azure fire joined the fray. Lilis and Lanya looked up in surprise and the two powerhouses using their Manifestations panicked a little.
When the First Art made contact with the two Manifestations, a muffled explosion occurred. The darkness from Karaskan and the fire from Chulainn blew up together and spread for hundreds of miles. But all of it was thoroughly covered by the blue flames and reduced to nothing.
That's why the explosion didn't make any sound and the shockwave was never produced. At some point, the First Art's flames stopped spreading further and instead started condensing above Pandora's temple.
The sky was slowly cleared and only a giant sphere of fire was left. At some point, the flames burned stronger and, completely disregarding Chulainn's and Karaskan's attempts to control their magic, started pulling the two Manifestations' remaining traces upward.
It only took a minute for the First Art to swallow both the darkness and the fire. Karaskan and Chulainn both jumped back as they dazedly watched their magic being hijacked.
They were even more shocked when they saw the sphere shrink and squash their magic to nothingness. When the Manifestations had finally been terminated, the azure fire took the form of a spiral and spun sluggishly before being thrown back in the sky as if it was being siphoned.
The First Art occupied the sky once again, but the overall quantity of flames had greatly diminished after the ordeal.
The Mad God and the Hellhound stared dumbfounded. They were both astounded and greatly aggravated because their Manifestations had been consumed by an independent spell even though the caster wasn't present. Heck, it was still growing stronger as they were looking at it.
"Is that the First Blue Art?" Chulainn mumbled. "(It seems to be continuously hoarding energy and storing it... Is it the hidden effect?)" He thought and then looked in another direction now that the barrier around them had disappeared.
His eyes swept over the giant crater shaped by their earlier clash and then fell on the gods and Ifrit who were flying toward them.
"It seems that your plan is not going to end up well for you after all," Chulainn snickered and said to Karaskan.
The Mad God sneered and looked behind him, at the temple who was totally unscathed by the explosion of which it had been the epicenter. Karaskan smirked and turned into a shadow that crawled inside.
Chulainn glared at him but didn't dare to follow him in. He was sure that if he tried to step inside that temple alone, he wouldn't be able to get out. When Ifrit arrived with everyone else, they all stopped beside Chulainn and refrained from going inside too.
"What do we do now? I'm not sure we can do much to this," Aphrodite looked at the temple which was radiating a really scary aura.
"I don't know. This temple is where Pandora takes refuge when it's ready to open," Azes said. "But right now, we're not at the 'ready phase' anymore. It's already 'opening'."
"Then why don't you tell us what will happen exactly. You still didn't give us a clear answer."
Azes was about to answer when a huge shadow suddenly broke through the roof of the temple and landed right in front of them.
The figure was ten meters tall and was holding a huge hammer with one hand. The appearance of the newcomer shocked many. A skin that looked like splintered charcoal and hair that was literally fire. He had a cross-shaped scar on his forehead and his face was expressionless and hollow. His red and unfocused eyes swept over the place and scanned the individuals in front of him.
He then ignored them and turned around as he shouldered his hammer. Pandora flew out of the temple and expanded to become even bigger than Chulainn himself. The runes were even more visible now, giving off a mysterious feeling.
The box then started diffusing a lot of different sounds. Keys unlocking, gears turning, metallic noises, hammering sounds, and even some weak detonations. Pandora was opening.
Chulainn, Lilis, Lanya, Poseidon, Hades, Azes, Gabriel, Michael, Aphrodite, and Ifrit stood together, staring at the big guy who had just made his entrance.
All of them together were the peak of this world. But these same people seemed to be hesitating in front of the newcomer. Even Ifrit felt threatened when he looked at the ten-meter-tall demon.
Only Aphrodite had a really conflicted expression that contrasted with everyone else's.
"…Hephaestus," she muttered.
"What?!" Zeus exclaimed in shock when he heard that. "The Hephaestus?" He observed the demon again with extreme attention and his eyes widened. Although his appearance was nothing like before, it definitely was Hephaestus.
"I knew it…" Azes uttered. "So, it was really because of Pandora that he left Heaven," he said and grunted. "It appears he ended up being corrupted by it… he's now its guardian." When he finished talking, Hephaestus suddenly turned around to look at him.
Azes froze instantly and cold sweat formed on his back. Hephaestus, who had become Pandora's Demon, smirked. He lifted his hammer and when the gods reflexively focused on it, Hephaestus had vanished from their line of sight.
Before they knew what was happening, they had already been sent flying away because of a single swing from the massive weapon. Zeus, Hades, Michael, and Aphrodite immediately coughed blood but Gabriel managed to evade it since she was the farthest from Hephaestus.
Chulainn retreated in time thanks to Lanya's last-second prediction. The only one who defended against the blow and actually stopped the hammer was Ifrit. His arm had grown blade-like scales which he used to parry the Hephaestus' hammer.
Ifrit growled. He released his aura and the boulders and small rocks around started hovering in the air before blasting. The Djinn roared and his flames condensed to clash with the hammer. Hephaestus countered the fire magic with his own as they exchanged blow for blow.
The two kept flying around, provoking shockwaves and explosions everywhere they stepped on. In merely a few seconds, their fight had caused enough to damage to destroy a megapolis if there was one there.
They seemed to be conducting a pretty balanced fight but strangely, at some point, Ifrit suddenly failed to resist one of Hephaestus's strikes and the 'blades' he had produced earlier broke as went straight toward the ground.
By the time Ifrit had been overpowered, the gods had already recovered thanks to Gabriel and launched themselves at Hephaestus.
Chulainn also joined the fight. He cooperated with Lanya and Lilis who had once again resonated their souls. And with the vision of the Unblinking Draconic Eyes, their teamwork was flawless. The three were at the Second Divine, but their teamwork easily raised their fighting ability to the next level.
But even with all of that, Hephaestus was inexplicably on the winning side. It was bizarre. His aura and attack were that strong but the gods were easily falling under his power. But when they remembered how Hephaestus had overpowered Ifrit although the two were almost equal at the beginning made them realize something.
"It's not that he's stronger," Hades muttered as he stood up from the crater he had just created with his body.
"I know that already!" Poseidon shouted in reply. He reached the Demon's flank and waved his trident, which he had spent a great part of his remaining mana for. His soul weapon glowed and a colossal amount of water erupted from underground and formed a tsunami of high pressurized water.
Hephaestus stared at the approaching tide with his emotionless eyes and swung his hammer. It struck nothing but red cracks appeared in mid-air along with the recognizable sound of glass shattering.
The cracks spread quickly and the tsunami that was coming at Hephaestus split in two and made the entirety of Hell quake. Poseidon was also struck by an unforeseeable shockwave and shed more blood in the process.
"We are getting weaker," Azes concluded Hades' declaration and everyone nodded in agreement.
Ifrit snorted and jumped toward Hephaestus again.
"Will you stop charging individually like that?!" Gabriel shouted but before Ifrit could even get the idea of replying, he was deterred by the hammer again. The archangel sighed and healed him anyway.
After Ifrit, it was Lanya and Lilis who flapped their wings and attacked in tandem. Lilis was the one at the front, her magic actually worked pretty well on the Demon and it could halt his movements for a second.
It was long enough for Lanya to stab her rapier in Hephaestus's chest. She grunted as she pulled her weapon back and pressed the trigger on the handle. With a dry sound, the pellets flew out of the small cannon and pierced the Demon's skin.
Her sword was instantly taken out by the recoil and she was then faced with Hephaestus's incoming blade. But before she was hit, a big snake passed by and carried her away. Chulainn landed behind Hephaestus and breathed out fire with his three heads.
The corrupted god took on the attack blankly and merely waved his sword to extinguish the flames before kicking Lilis away as his own flames went through Chulainn's defenses.
"How do we stop Pandora from taking our strength?!" Michael shouted as he swung his white spear at Hephaestus in coordination with Hades. The three of them exchanged a few blows before Michael's spear was grabbed by the huge hands and thrown away with the angel still holding on it.
Hephaestus then infused his mana into his hammer and red lines appeared on it as he swung it downward. Hades' eyes narrowed as he recalled what happened earlier with Poseidon's tsunami.
He barely raised his shield in time to protect himself. But even if it was his manifestation, the red cracks and shock generated easily went through the shield, squeezed his organs, and even broke some of his bones.
When Aphrodite retrieved Hades with her wind magic and brought him back to safety, everyone stopped moving and chose to gaze at Hephaestus from afar. At the same time, a shadow suddenly emerged from inside the temple and rushed toward Lilis who had been momentarily separated from the rest.
Chulainn couldn't react in time and Lanya, who was about to do something, abruptly stopped to look at Lilis in curiosity and confusion. Her draconic eyes had already seen what would happen.
When the shadow was about to reach Lilis, a transparent barrier appeared to protect her. The shadow was paralyzed the moment it touched it and its real appearance was then revealed. Karaskan sneered and looked up to see an old man walking toward them in mid-air with a cane in his hand.
"It's now that you show up, old-timer?" Karaskan scoffed. The man calmly landed on the ground and stood there with his cane firmly pressed on the ground. "Chronos."