Reincarnated in a novel: I am the villain!-Chapter 317: Escape!

Yes! Azazel had arrived!

Through the stabilized Void Gate, the figure fully emerged into the blinding red light.

He appeared human. He wore an immaculate, dark military uniform adorned with strange, shifting medals, and his long, flowing crimson hair drifted in an invisible wind.

He didn’t possess horns or grotesque mutations. He looked elegant. Perfect.

But Damien’s [Sensory Intent] screamed so violently that black blood began to leak from his ears beneath his mask.

’It’s not his real body,’ Damien realized, his 8th-Order Eclipse Core grinding to a complete halt, suppressed by the sheer conceptual weight of the entity. ’The dimensional walls of Elias and this floor os the Abyss would shatter if his true body crossed over. This is just a projection. A mere fraction of his Will.’

Yet, even as a projection, the presence of Azazel, the Heavenly Demon Lord, was incomprehensible.

Damien couldn’t move his legs. The System interface in his vision began to violently glitch, throwing up warning screens in a frantic, bloody red.

[CRITICAL ALERT: EXTREME DIVINE INTERFERENCE.]

[Entity: Azazel (Projection)]

[Rank: God (Unquantifiable)]

[Warning: The gap in Orders is absolute, available Destiny Points cannot bridge this differential. Survival Chance: 0.0000%]

Damien couldn’t even grit his teeth. Beside him, Isabelle was forced flat against the ice, her demon blood completely paralyzed by the apex predator of all demonic lineages. A few meters away, Theron and Elizabeth, despite being 9th-Order Warlords, were frozen in place, unable to even lift their heads.

Azazel took a slow, casual look around the Frozen Hell. He glanced at the pile of ash that used to be the Rotting King, then turned his terrifying, crimson eyes toward Damien.

"A beautiful tragedy," Azazel’s voice didn’t travel through the air; it vibrated directly inside their souls. "A son descends into the abyss to save his parents. The very same boy who shattered my 12th General, Charron’s projection, on the surface. I must admit, little Zero, you are entertaining."

Azazel clasped his hands behind his back, his boots hovering an inch above the ice. He looked down at Theron, whose right arm and chest were still covered in the shifting, black chitin of the Void Mark.

"But I must thank you, Theron Voss," the Demon Lord smiled, a polite, aristocratic curve of his lips. "Without your relentless struggle, this Gate would not have stabilized for another century."

Theron gritted his teeth, his grey eyes burning as he fought against the absolute suppression. "What... are you talking about?"

Azazel let out a soft, mocking chuckle.

"Did you truly believe that a bloated, decaying corpse like the Rotting King could suppress two 9th-Order Warlords?" Azazel asked, shaking his head in mild disappointment. "Your wife weaves illusions that can trick the cosmos. You wield a Shadow Law that devours reality. You are legends of the mortal plane."

The Demon Lord pointed a perfectly manicured finger at the black corruption on Theron’s arm.

"The Rotting King was never stronger than you. He only needed to hold the leash."

Damien’s eyes widened as the horrific realization finally clicked into place, answering the question of why his parents had been losing so badly against a single enemy of the same Order.

"The Void Mark," Damien whispered, his voice trembling under the pressure.

"Smart boy," Azazel’s crimson eyes flicked to Damien. "The Void Mark is a parasitic anchor. A two-way conduit."

Azazel looked back at Theron and Elizabeth, relishing the despair dawning on their faces.

"Every time you struck the Rotting King, every time you burned your 9th-Order life force to protect your wife, the Void Mark siphoned your divine mana directly into the Gate. You weren’t fighting the Rotting King, Theron. You were fighting your own drained energy. You built the very bridge I am walking on."

"But the Mark..." Theron choked out, blood dripping from his chin. "The Mark belongs to the Void Demon God. Your rival."

"Indeed," Azazel smiled, the red aura around him flaring. "The Void God placed his mark on you, hoping to anchor his own descent. The Rotting King was his loyal dog, working to summon his master. But the Void God is a stagnant, cautious fool."

Azazel looked directly at Damien, a spark of cruel amusement in his eyes.

"When the beacon of your ’Full Counter’ at the Academy reached the deep Abyss, it signaled that the world above was ripe. So, I simply walked over to the 13th Seat’s territory and hijacked my rival’s conduit. I stole his door."

Elizabeth let out a choked sob, her hands trembling against the ice. For sixteen years, they had fought tooth and nail, thinking they were holding back the apocalypse, only to realize they were the batteries powering it.

"And yet," Azazel mused, looking around the shattered landscape. "Something is missing. Two 9th-Order Demigods fueled the Gate... but there was a third, wasn’t there?"

Damien’s mind raced.

’The Ancestor!’

When Damien had first arrived in Layer 9, he had seen the towering, necrotic skeletal form of the Voss Ancestor fighting alongside his parents. But during the coordinated strike against the Rotting King, the Ancestor had vanished.

RUMBLE.

The ground beneath Azazel’s feet didn’t just shake. The entire continent of Layer 9 convulsed.

The black ice splintered for hundreds of miles.

"You talk too much, Demon," a voice ground out from the depths of the planet itself, sounding like tectonic plates violently shifting.

Azazel looked down, a flicker of surprise crossing his perfect features.

The bedrock of the 9th Layer erupted.

Ancestor Thaddeus Rhun, "The Bone Sculptor," hadn’t been hiding. As a 9th-Order Warlord who commanded the absolute Law of Bone and Midnight Shadow, the Ancestor had realized early on that fighting the Rotting King directly was only feeding the Gate.

So, he had burrowed beneath the ice. He had expanded his skeletal frame to the size of a continent, physically weaving his own indestructible ribs and spine into the tectonic plates of Layer 9. For the last hour, the Ancestor had been acting as the literal foundation of the world, physically holding the dimension together with his bare hands to prevent Azazel’s passive gravity from deleting them all into the Void.

KRA-KOOOOM!

A colossal skeletal hand, wreathed in pristine, uncorrupted Midnight Shadow, burst from the ground directly beneath Azazel.

The projection of the Demon Lord was forced backward, his pristine uniform shifting as he gracefully avoided the grasping fingers of the continent-sized behemoth.

"Theron! Damien!" the Ancestor’s voice boomed, forcing his way out of the bedrock.

A towering, necrotic spine erupted from the ice, forming a massive, indestructible wall of fossilized bone and dense shadow between the Voss family and Azazel’s projection. The sheer density of the Ancestor’s true 9th-Order Domain slammed into the area, temporarily blocking out the suffocating red light of the Heavenly Demon.

The paralyzing pressure vanished.

Damien gasped, falling to his hands and knees as oxygen rushed back into his lungs. Isabelle collapsed next to him, panting heavily.

"Ancestor!" Theron shouted, pushing himself up, the Void Mark on his chest bleeding violently.

The colossal skeletal skull of the Ancestor looked down at them from over the bone wall. His eye sockets burned with ancient, starry black flames.

"Azazel is right," the Ancestor rumbled, his voice strained as he pushed his 9th-Order core to its absolute limit just to hold back Azazel’s projection. "This isn’t a fight we can win. That entity is a God. He is the concept of the End."

The bone wall groaned. Sizzling sounds echoed as Azazel’s Red Aura began to passively melt through the 9th-Order fossilized bone on the other side.

"I can hold this projection back, but not for long," the Ancestor stated, his massive skull turning to look directly at Damien.

"Child of my blood. You have done the impossible by reaching the 8th Order and finding us here. But this is a realm you cannot touch yet. You need to leave. Now."

"We’re not leaving without you!" Damien roared, his Dual-Core igniting again as he grabbed the Pantheon Sword, desperately trying to mentally access his DP to buy a miracle.

The Ancestor let out a low, rumbling laugh that shook the ice.

"Spoken like a true Voss. But survival is not cowardice, Damien. It is strategy."

The Ancestor’s burning gaze shifted to Theron and Elizabeth. "The Voss bloodline must not end here. The Gate is jammed because the Rotting King’s conduit is dead, but Azazel will eventually force his true body through. You must warn the surface."

"Ancestor, no!" Theron realized what the ancient entity was about to do, his grey eyes widening in horror.

"Go!" the Ancestor commanded, his voice echoing with finality. "Let an old bone do what he was meant to do. Protect the family!"

On the other side of the wall, Azazel laughed. The sound was casual, bored, and promised the end of all things.

"A wall of bone and shadow against the Void?" the Demon Lord mocked. "How quaint."

The red light intensified, and the wall began to turn to ash. The clock was ticking, and Damien realized with terrifying clarity that the climax of the Abyss wasn’t an assassination anymore.

It was a desperate, panicked escape from a God.

Authors note: Happy new month, and big shout out again to the top supporters like @Operativemojo @Brice03 @Aidan_Archer @RiceCriesTwice @Colores @Corpse_Monarch, you guys are absolute legends!

And to those who’s name I didn’t call, you have not been forgotten, as everyone who reads this book, is what gives me strength!

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