The rooms in the Hunter's Sanctuary were mostly empty, except for wood-paneled bed frames, empty wardrobes, and tables and chairs, and Char didn't know if thieves had stolen everything or if people hadn't properly decorated the place at all. He was leaning toward the latter. Shire suspected that at the beginning of the design of the church, people mistakenly thought that people would join the hunter organization, so that many empty rooms and beds were prepared for it, but the actual population has withered, and most people do not live in the church.
He lay on the bed with his hands flat on his chest.
"Sleep, sleep, it is easiest for intelligent beings to separate their consciousness from their bodies in dreams, and I will take you to hell in your dreams." "Graddiu said.
Demons look suspicious at all times.
"What are we going to do there?
"Listen, I have a very great kingdom there, a vast territory, billions of imps at my disposal, and hundreds of demon lords at my command."
"Now it's all gone."
"Wrong! It's still there, only I know that as soon as I leave, all my men will turn against me, follow my former enemies, and seize my inheritance, and the thought of that makes me furious! Char, we're going to get it back! Because I am the blade demon, I am the most powerful demon god! I possess the richest and most vast territory of hell!"
"What do I get?"
"Power, of course, endless power, my palace, my country has many treasures you can not imagine. Every time I invade a world, I bring back so much treasure that the bastards would never think I'd be able to kill it back."
"Won't the Kings of hell find you when you go back?"
"That's the problem. It's very dangerous. We could be slaughtered by these guys at any moment."
Shire had a shudder and woke up without sleep.
"Then I can't fool around with you."
"What? This is my turf. They must rest in my palace, enslaving my loyal generals, torturing the imps that grow out of my turf. Do you want me to suffer this humiliation in silence, alone in your soul?"
"That sounds good for you."
"You're a complete bastard, Char." "Cried Graddiu.
"But I don't mean to refuse altogether, if going to hell with you is really that lucrative, why not?" I'm just worried you're cheating."
"Well, here you rot in silence, wriggling a little in the rules of the earth, rejecting the power that comes your way."
"If the power is really that easy to get."
"Relax, it's just a dream, Char, and we'll become souls and slip into hell, where we'll form a demonic body and pretend to be a harmless demon." When we get what we want and get away fast enough, the Kings of Hell won't find us."
"How?"
"Take it easy, take it easy... Shire Do not be vigilant, let your guard down, and follow its natural movement completely..." Graddiu's voice grew fainter and fainter, slowly dragging Charles's consciousness into silence.
Charles along with Graddiu's will, gradually relax their alert heart, swept away the tedious world.
His tainted soul gradually floated out of his body, and Graddiu reached out his black claws from Charles's soul, and used his power to cut through everything, and slowly cut a crack in the void.
"Get in, Char, we're quick."
Charles struggled to adjust to his condition, this was not the time for hands and feet, his soul was shaking, and he felt that Gladius was trying to hold himself like an anchor, barely holding their position, lest they drift in the nothingness.
"Come on, get in." "If our souls get caught between the cracks, we'll be finished. We'll be divided into two, and there'll be four of us."
Shire was uneasy when he heard it. Was that how he felt when he was away from the body? He can even make sounds.
"Hello." He looked here and there. "I see a lot of beautiful things outside this room. It's so fuzzy."
"You don't get used to it, you leave your body for too long, you can't go back, fool, fast into the crack." Graddiu urged.
"What about my body?"
"Well... Thanks to the temperature, it will not rot for a while, and after too long it may be possible."
"What do you mean --"
- It was my body - Charles fell into a trance, followed a vague attraction, crawled slowly into the crack, and was quickly swallowed up by it, thinking of Graddius's warning, he could not help speeding up, and soon the real world was behind him.
He felt himself being sucked into a huge void where there was nothing, and yet he could observe himself.
What an ugly, ugly, dirty soul, like an unknown scorch, burned by the flame of Afen or so, the upper half black, the lower half mixed with endless colors, as if some unknown impurity, and the two are tightly stitched together, inseparable from each other.
"This is my soul? Why did it come to this?" Shire confused.
"You see, you see, this is your masterpiece, you have stuck my soul." My beautiful and pure soul is now bound by your ugly little mortal heart." "Said Graddius bitterly.
"It's amazing." Char thought it was very interesting.
Shire saw that the upper part of the soul changed rapidly, and that the black soul formed a grotesque creature with a narrow, sharp-edged head, innumerable blades growing from its arms, a thin body, and a delicate black blade on its back, which seemed to be used for some form of defense.
"What is this? Shire confused.
"This is who I am, isn't it... Powerful!"
"I thought there was something human about it."
"Bah, I am the devil, and it is strange to be human." This is what the Blade Demon really looks like."
"Is it not the size of a mountain, breaking the ground with a sword? You look a little unremarkable."
"Fool, in my stage, that kind of thing can be done with just thought, simple 'physical destruction' has reached its peak, and there is nothing that cannot be broken." Then the really important things became 'self-preservation,' 'concealment,' and 'discovery of the enemy.' The Kings of Chaos could annihilate me the moment they found me, and if they showed me an opportunity, I would not hesitate to cut up the rulers of Hell." Graddiu murmured softly.
"That good?"
"So you native hunters are small and useless, and when the devil comes, everything is in the bag." How many worlds have we conquered? How can yours survive? The odds are zero, blood is piling up!" Graddiu let out a roar.
"We'll see."
"I envy your ignorance and fearlessness." Seeing that he was in no way a threat to the Shire, Graddius muttered.
Is this hell? A world where demons live? Char looked into this space, and there were many dim points of light around him, moving slowly upward with him. He held up his head, and a red light flashed into his eyes.
It's a flame... Endless fire. No, magma? They're under a pool of magma! And their souls are drifting toward this pool of swelling stone fire.
The boiling lava opens its arms to the souls of Charles and Graddiu,
It's hot... Very hot! Char's soul burned in the lava, he desperately upstream.
It is impossible to feel this way in reality, he becomes a spirit body, and all his senses are greatly weakened. Not long ago he had been in his own bed, but now he was in another supernatural space, and this journey was new and frightening to him.
Char senses that there are great forces pulling him down, trying to pull him into the bottom of the endless lava pool, back to the empty and dark space where he will never have the chance to rise again, the endless emptiness will melt his soul and make it impossible for him to return to his body.
"The place we were just in is called the gap between the outside world, the void between the world and the world. The dead world, the world turned into scraps, or the fragments of the world, once forgotten, will become that kind of place, there is nothing. Even the demons, only those of a special nature dare to stay there for a long time. MMHHHMMM... There are a lot of other daredevils out there, like some of the gods in your world..." Graddiu looked down.
Perhaps something could live there, but not the Shire, who felt the gravitational pull growing stronger beneath him.
No, it must not sink... Char swam as fast as he could.
"Up, up! Gladius urged, "Our souls are so weak, but because of this, we can easily cross the rift between the worlds." When I was at the height of my powers, I had to open a particularly large rift to cross the boundary. Now it takes only a negligible amount of strength."
Charles dimly saw that many small souls around him were also climbing up more slowly than Charles, and with a little effort he could throw down hundreds of such souls.
"These are disordered souls born out of chaos. They are endless, they are very small, and they go back and forth in life and death." Graddius also saw these tiny souls.
Char saw smoke and rocks on the surface of the magma, and he was moving up, and he was near the surface of the pool.
"What happens when you go up?"
"A proper body. Congratulations. Outside souls go to hell and become demons."
Char leapt from the surface of the magma, and as soon as his soul came into contact with the air of this world, it quickly transformed into demonic substance, forming a black scale on the surface to form his shell.
He glided through the pool of magma, swimming toward the shore, the flames leaping over his body, but he felt no burning pain. The demon shell was so fire-resistant that the heat subsided.
"The devil... The devil's body..." Char swam across the magma pool and climbed to the rocky shore, where he was confronted by a demon larger than himself.
The demon seemed to have emerged some time before Shire, and was exceptionally strong, with large red eyes, a strange appearance, and a head of black horns.
"Ga! I ate you!" The tall demon roared and rushed towards the Shire.
Shire was caught off guard was knocked down, the big devil bit Shire's arm, was torn, Shire felt his soul in the rapid passage out.
"No, no, no! Kill it! I'm getting out of here. Hey! Hey! Hurry up! Don't let me die here!" "Cried Graddiu.
Char wanted to too, but he felt his strength was particularly small, and this new demon body was very unfit.
The soul quickly pours outward --