WHOOOSH!
It was a huge wind, indicative of the speed the one who caused it had traveled to reach this place.
"Where?"
One word.
When the 4 Evils heard it, their bodies froze.
That voice…
That was the voice of a person they never wished to meet in their lives.
"Where?"
It was repeated, this time in a far sterner tone.
They were frozen, but they had no choice but to respond.
"He…he escaped…"
Lust spoke for the group.
"Escaped?"
The man looked between them. There was no emotion in his gaze.
"From all of you?"
He observed their states.
Gluttony was unharmed, and wounds on the rest of them were no more than surface level injuries.
But what was he sensing from them?
Was that fear?
"Disappointing."
Only one word again. It was like the man didn't believe they were worthy enough to converse with.
It didn't matter how the battle went or what happened with the enemy.
All that mattered was that the person the Lord wanted was gone.
The man closed his eyes and sensed his surroundings
His awareness spread across the entire Northern Region without halting.
And when he sensed no sign of the man he was looking for…
"Tch."
He clicked his tongue.
"I will report this to the Lord. Do not think your pitiful performances will go unnoticed."
The man didn't stop to look at the disgraces known as the 4 Evils any longer.
He only came here for one purpose, and as it had become impossible to achieve, he would return to his Lord and report exactly what he'd seen.
The 4 Evils could say nothing. They didn't try to stop him from leaving.
After all, they truly did show a pitiful performance.
Damien didn't have to work hard to escape.
No, once he confused them and made them wary, rather than escaping, he just left.
He absolutely could've continued the fight there, and though they didn't want to admit it, they didn't think they'd win if he did.
That strange power he showed at the end was an ability unlike anything they'd ever seen. The second he started using it, Wrath, the most sturdy of them, was forced to cough blood and focus on recovery.
They were fighting an unknown enemy. If they wanted to capture him, they needed to do a lot more to understand his strength before even trying.
Yet, they didn't get anything close to an opportunity to do so. It was all over after just a few clashes.
This was the most demoralizing battle they'd ever fought. It didn't even feel like a battle, more like an encounter against someone who didn't have any interest in fighting them from the start.
That, of course, was a correct assumption, as Damien really didn't have any plans to fight them, but for it to be felt meant that he truly wasn't putting any worth in their existences.
It made them feel a plethora of hostile emotions, but those were all squashed the moment "that person" arrived.
They couldn't focus their hatred on one man anymore.
They had to show results befitting of their position as soon as possible against the enemies of the Straea Clan, causing as much damage as possible.
Because as long as "that man" said even a single word, they would die.
He was Malevalon's true right hand.
He was the person under one and above all others in the Straea Clan.
He, Malefice Straea, was Malevalon's blood-related younger brother, and the strongest and most loyal person under his control.
Malefice practiced a law nobody else understood or even knew the identity of. That law could kill anyone as long as Malefice wanted them dead.
There was no way to escape it.
He was someone who could kill Damien with a single glance, even with his new comprehensions about Existence.
Just like Malevalon, he was someone Damien absolutely couldn't mess with right now, especially if he wanted to save his father.
He was lucky he left when he did.
But his departure was the worst thing that could possibly happen to the 4 Evils.
This failure was the biggest mistake they'd ever made, and with their positions and lives at stake…
They had gone insane with the desire to live, a primal urge that came from the deepest depths of their souls.
***
There was a dark place.
It was far removed from any sort of society, located in the exact center point of the Sacred Abyss Universe.
Here, there was a darkness beyond darkness. A supermassive black hole that was slowly consuming everything around it.
But it was not a black hole.
Rather, it was the latent energy subconsciously released by the being in the center of that mass.
He never moved from that place.
Many people hardly even knew of his existence.
However, they all knew his name.
He was the owner of this cosmos, the supreme being that controlled any and all things within it.
Nobody in existence could stand his aura or look at him directly, so even his own subordinates had only interacted with him through telepathy from billions of kilometers away.
The Dark God.
The reasons behind his stasis were unknown to the outside, but while he never moved or truly interacted with anyone else, he was always watching.
Nothing that happened in the Sacred Abyss Universe could escape his perception.
And as Foreign Territories spread across the Heavenly World, he gained the ability to sense the undercurrents of that place as well.
'Something…is amiss.'
His thoughts didn't have true form. They'd reached such a spiritual level that they couldn't be properly phrased in existing language anymore, but that was something of a summary.
He could sense it.
In the True Void Universe, something major was happening.
His plans were being meddled with by an unknown factor.
'Something…I cannot sense?'
It wasn't that he couldn't sense it, but that he could only sense the absence of it.
There was something that should have been within the bounds of his perception, but instead of being there, it appeared as an emptiness too large to be possible.
That emptiness was uncomfortable yet familiar.
To the Dark God, who had never felt familiarity with anything outside of himself, it was an extremely concerning feeling.
'Find it.'
His thought was projected into the cosmos, sent to every being under his direct command.
'Find the anomaly.'
It had to be eliminated.
Throughout the entirety of time, anomalies like this were not rare. However, while they were not rare, every time they appeared, they'd cause scenarios that otherwise could not exist.
They impeded the Dark God's conquest, and in some cases, they truly managed to cause him trouble.
But they never succeeded in defeating him.
They never managed to achieve anything beyond what he allowed, because they'd be eliminated before they had the chance to do so.
This time was the same as every other time.
That anomaly would not be able to grow, nor would it be able to thrive.
That anomaly would fall, and the cosmos would become his.
After all, this was not the first cosmos to fall by his hands.
The Dark God was not a being who could be stopped.
This was a fact the True Void Universe would soon come to learn.
He would be sure of it.
