Chapter 2339: The Infernal Terror of Hell

Agnar sat on one of the stools outside the city’s bar and looked at the red sky above. This entire district of the city was empty as all devils evacuated, and it wasn’t due to Lucifer’s fight or anything like that. Those happened a few hours ago, and everything should’ve gotten back to normal.

He looked to the side at one of the problems that caused all of the devils to flee. There, right outside the bar’s door, a woman with black jaguar ears was munching on a large fish, tearing the flesh with ease. That was Maharaja, the God Eater, the Black Hunter, and the Devil Queen of the Rakshasa.

Inside the bar, he could also see Tiamat talking with the girls, teaching them a bit about magic. Apparently, she was a human once, and a witch at that.

"We almost destroyed Hell." Agnar sighed, and Maharaja stopped munching and looked at him with a smile. "It’s natural-nya. It’s the reason Yog doesn’t want Arad to grow fast-nya." She quickly realized that she probably shouldn’t have said that, and gasped.

"So... Yog has put her grippers into this." He sighed and then looked at the sky. "At least Arad is fine. Kali would’ve caused a mess if he got hurt."

Maharaja giggled. "Well-nya. Kali would destroy the universe-nya." She went back to eating her fish, and Agnar sent a quiet message back to Merlin through magic, informing her of how things went, as well as sending her magic samples from hell.

****

Back at the Private Quarter, Merlin got everything and started working on it immediately, mapping Hell’s Ninth layer and guiding Doma and Sara toward the library that Arad pointed to. Abel himself had gone back to the seventh layer of hell to finish his deal with the lord there, so everything was going well.

But at the same time, Merlin was tracking a strange signal in the uppermost layer, the first layer of hell. Apparently, there is a massive and powerful presence growing there, which has both Eris’s and Arad’s magic signals attached to it.

"You got it locked in?" Eris pushed the lab’s door open and walked in, finding all of Merlin’s helpers working their bones out to track the magic. Merlin, who sat naked on her chair, looked back with a smile and replied. "I got it tracked, but the power itself is strange." She pulled out several maps, each of them showing where the magic moved and how dense it was.

Eris looked at it and quickly agreed that it had traces of her own magic as well as that of Arad. But she immediately smiled. "Good, I was worried for a second, but that’s her. Pin." Hearing that, Merlin inspected the magic again and quickly calibrated her sensors to Pin’s signal, confirming Eris’s words.

"It’s a 100% match... but wasn’t Pin a mere imp? How come she is a devil now?" She looked at Eris, and Eris waved her hand. "Devils grow by hunting sinners, defeating stronger devils, and surviving hell."

****

Back in Hell, in the First Layer, a deadly battle was taking place. Pin was small; she was taller than she was before, but she still stood at no more than three feet tall. Her back was hunched, her skin torn and festering, and her visage could only be described as a macabre piece of art, deformed and disgusting enough to make a devil flinch. That’s why many devils still feared her.

With one leap, she flew forward and stabbed a massive devil with a shattered bone piece in the eye, cut his face open, and jumped toward the next devil who stood against her. The battlefield was marred with blood and guts, the remains of her prey, as no regular devil or sinner could match her agility and cruelty.

She was the right hand of Murder, and thus was a master at killing things as painfully as possible. But that wasn’t the end of it, as she held the Lord’s Left Forearm within her, which fueled her with enough power that she was easily able to punch way above her own power rank.

"You murdering monster! How many lives have you ruined?" One devil shouted, rushing at her with his spear pointing forward. Flames engulfed his body as he thrust, and Pin’s blood-red eyes looked at him for a second as her body moved on its own, slitting his throat open.

As he fell to the ground, gargling his own blood, Pin landed on his body and looked at all the devils as she burst out laughing. This place was fantastic, amazing, and unmatched. Here in hell, she could murder all she wanted without any consequences, and many more devils just kept throwing themselves at her. Here, she could easily fuel her Goddess.

The devils were starting to get terrified of her as some of them backed away, not wanting to deal with this crazed maniac any longer. She had been on a bloody rampage for a week now, and thousands of devils had perished at her hands. Some were fighters, some weren’t. She didn’t seem to care or discriminate between who she killed or how; what mattered to her the most was the act of murder itself.

But the horrifying part was what happened when they killed her a few days ago. Most devils and sinners try to remain dead as long as possible to avoid the suffering of Hell, but for some reason, this ugly monster spawned right back instantly and kept going on her rampage. It seems that even her own murder only serves to fuel whatever horrid goal she is seeking.

As all of the devils fought her for another hour, they finally managed to kill her again. She had been fighting nonstop for several days now, so exhaustion gave them the edge, but they all knew the silence wouldn’t last for long.

About a minute later, flames burst from the ground, and like a plant, bones sprouted from the ground, a blazing fury of blinding plasma. The heat was so intense that it fried several devils who stood nearby, and inside the inferno, a five-foot-tall skeleton formed; flesh and organs filled and covered it before the veins and skin made everything whole.

What emerged wasn’t the deformed gremlin the devils fought, but a somewhat decent-looking devilish woman with bright red skin, black eyes, and enough cursed aura that they almost mistook her for a higher-ranking devil.

[Curse: Terror]

[Curse Description: The more the user is feared, the stronger they’ll be. The more terror the use spreads, the stronger they’ll be.]

Pin had finally gained her Curse and evolved from a mere imp to a true devil. In the blink of an eye, she flashed past several of the devils, ripping them apart with her bare hands as she snatched the cloak of one of them to cover herself up. And the moment their organs tore apart, plasma burned their corpses into ash as the entire battlefield was set ablaze.

That’s how the Infernal Terror of Hell started her journey.