I Am The Heroine's Father: The Cannon Fodder's Ascent-Chapter 46: I am such an idiot

The small ball of energy turned into a massive beam, it was red at first, then blue, grey, but it eventually turned pure white, more than 80 feet thick.

Boom!

Lucifer didn't even try to dodge, he just stood there, staring at the incoming death ray which could easily pulverize any living being's physical body.

Crash!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

It directly hit him in the face, the light consuming his whole body, vanishing in the bright light. Thousands and thousands of explosions rang where he was standing.

Velmire was sure that even if it was an immortal phoenix—the kind of monsters who can regenerate from anything and just can't die unless their soul is destroyed—they would still physically perish to something like this. It would break them beyond the regenerative capabilities of even an average phoenix.

Millions of cracks appeared all over the lava ocean, revealing black light, as if reality itself was shattering.

This was a different reality than the original. An attack like this was something new, something it had never experienced or adapted to. It could not handle something like this.

Meaning—

Velmire won. He would automatically return to the original reality if this one shattered.

Of course not.

A single finger rose through the blinding explosions. Instantly, the terrain shifted.

"It's cold. Really cold," Velmire said, panting hard on the ground, struggling to breathe as the chilled air scraped his lungs.

"Seal of Element: Oxygen," he whispered. Of course, he had prepared something so necessary for survival in a special seal.

He sighed, taking a deep breath, staring at the still-raging explosions with a shaken heart.

'How... how the hell can someone survive this!?' He was at a complete loss. There was no way any living being could survive something like that—unless they were literally a God.

He looked around at the massive ice mountains, sharp 10-foot shards constantly falling from the sky. They couldn't harm either of them—Lucifer's naturally tough body saw to that, and Velmire's perfect defense seal repelled everything due to negative gravity.

He came to a conclusion—

This time, they did not travel to another reality.

Another reality traveled to them.

The dust slowly settled, revealing a silhouette of a man—

Lucifer.

He stood unharmed, still crossing his arms like before, his expression genuinely impressed.

Johan's whole body shook, his thoughts making less sense by the second.

"What!? How the hell did Lucifer revive at full power? Even for Leor, this is too far-fetched... no one can just revive someone back from the dead, someone sealed by the Goddess of Creation herself at that... even if some part of his soul escaped, he shouldn't possess this ability."

"Huh? Why are we talking about that kid?" Melodis was genuinely confused and intrigued by Johan's words. Why the fuck was his old enemy revived by someone like that kid?

'This is definitely the ability "The Cursed Worlds," one of Lucifer's many overpowered abilities. It allows him to travel to random alternate versions of realities. Even now—

Lucifer did not endure the attack. He would've been damaged by something like this, but he transferred his body into another reality, so the attack hit nothing.' Johan thought, analyzing the information at hand.

Then something else caught his attention in the 'recording'.

Lucifer raised his arm high to the sky, as if reaching for something above, then suddenly—

A giant axe, bigger than Lucifer's current body, appeared in his right hand out of thin air. It had a dark golden body with a bright silver blade—more than three feet across.

Velmire frowned, feeling the demonic and dangerous aura seeping from the beautiful battle axe.

"Ymir's Grip!!" he yelled, instantly performing a high-level sealing spell.

Golden magic circles, patterned with thousands of symbols made of pure golden light, erupted and multiplied around Lucifer. Millions of them filled the vast landscape with a menacing glow.

"Time freeze!" he spoke through a clenched jaw, biting his lip with regret.

Swhirrllll!

All of the magic circles exploded at once. Golden magic particles fell from the sky like snowfall, spreading everywhere.

Silence.

Tense silence.

Air, atoms, ice shards, Lucifer—everything paused. Even the planet they were on stopped spinning, causing massive earthquakes which also froze before they could even happen. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

Programming this spell in a seal had taken Velmire more than 25 years, and countless trials and failures. He felt genuine remorse for losing his life's work, but he had saved it for a moment like this.

Hah! Hah!

He greedily swallowed air from the Seal of Oxygen, trying to stabilize his Aether core. But it didn't seem to work. He had utilized too much energy—even though this was a long-prepared seal, it still took a toll.

He sighed.

"Seal of Life: Aether," he mumbled.

A red heart appeared on his forehead, oozing with energy.

Suddenly, it began to disappear, becoming transparent by the second as Velmire's pale face filled with life once again.

His Aether reserves were already massive, but as a cautious man, he regularly stored extra Aether in different seals for emergencies like this.

He clapped his hands in a praying gesture, palms and fingers colliding perfectly. After a second—

He slowly spread both palms outward, and—

A massive green magic circle formed high in the sky—over Lucifer's still body—more than 200 meters wide.

"Go to Hell, monster. Devil in the new dress," he declared quietly, his eyes growing firm.

When he said go to Hell, he meant it, because—

Devil in the New Dress was a divine sealing spell that trapped the victim not in a traditional seal, but in a powerful illusion.

An illusion filled and made with the victim's worst nightmares.

Nightmares replayed millions and billions of times, creatively evolving each time to cause maximum mental harm.

The victim wouldn't even realize it was an illusion, forced only to endure the mental suffering and wish for it to stop.

Naturally, Velmire suspected that someone like Lucifer could easily evade a spell that took time to activate, so to make sure it worked, he had paused time using his master spell: Ymir's Grip.

Just as the spell was about to release—

"Alright, that really does seem dangerous. I should stop acting." Lucifer's lips moved. His body remained frozen, but his voice sounded serious—for the first time in the entire encounter.

Velmire's eyes widened to the limit. He looked around, wondering if his spell had failed—but everything was still perfectly frozen.

Then—

Lucifer's grip tightened on the golden axe.

Whoosh!

His hand automatically swung the axe. The air cracked, the atmosphere itself split, reality shattered—this was no longer a battle. It was divine judgment. A single swing of Lucifer's axe caused destruction on a level that defied logic.

It also freed the thick air around the swing's radius to move again. Ice shards scattered. But below that point, everything was still frozen—the spell was still working. However—

Lucifer had adapted to it.

He had adapted to time freezing and could no longer be affected by it.

Swish!

He disappeared.

The green light fell on the empty space like the judgment of heaven, releasing a 200-meter-wide green light ray.

"This axe—Kratos, I named it—was a creature born beside Ymir. She sealed that thing inside this axe... her words were, 'If I am the positivity of this world, this is the negativity.'" Lucifer whispered into Velmire's ear, making him sweat profusely—creating a miracle of sweat in -125980-degree temperature.

Lucifer laughed coldly, adding, "Basically, if Ymir can create time, Kratos can destroy it. It can destroy anything. But destruction requires understanding... so it can understand, and adapt to anything."

Velmire's pupils dilated to the limit.

'Ymir? The Goddess? Who is this man to possess a weapon like this?' He believed Lucifer's every word—there was no other explanation.

Time could not be avoided.

Everything ages. Everything dies to time.

But he...

Swirl!

Lucifer's axe moved instantly, not wasting another word—trying to cut Velmire in half from the waist.

"Repel!!" Velmire's breath caught in his throat. He immediately activated his strongest defense. There was no way he could dodge something moving at that speed.

Lucifer looked surprised as Kratos stopped just two inches from Velmire's body.

Repel created a gravity so dense that the closer something got, the further it would be thrown—the exact opposite of a black hole.

But what shocked Velmire was that, instead of being thrown thousands of kilometers away due to the force of Repel and Lucifer's strength, the axe only slowed down.

By two inches.

The only explanation—

Lucifer's raw strength defied normal reasoning.

Just as Velmire thought of using "sprint" to teleport a few hundred kilometers away to escape the unavoidable death, then to think of something, using this golden window—even if it was slowed, it would be enough—but—

Lucifer's nonchalant voice rang.

"Tchh, you killed the momentum." Lucifer raised the Kratos high again, directly grabbing Velmire's shoulder to stop the "Sprint" from even being activated.

Velmire's eyes widened, "You... you broke the repel!?" his voice sounded full of horror and disbelief. Touching his shoulder should have been impossible.

Then—

Tuck!

Velmire's eyes widened, everything turned upside down—the snow mountains, Lucifer, and then—he saw it—his body, below torso, his robe, but only half of it.

Thud!

He fell hard on his back and the reality was kicking in, he realised the simple fact, he was dying.

He placed his hand over the black dragon pin on his breast pocket, clenching it tightly. A symbol of his service for Crimson Empire for over 20 years.

But he didn't even join to serve, he joined because he wanted to follow someone—

'I am such an idiot... Why, why didn't I tell Orihime I love her? She gave me so many signs—she grabbed my hand when traveling, put her head on my shoulder while on the carriage... Why am I... such a coward?' His mind grew clear as he bit his lip, trying to suppress the deep regret.

'I wonder how Her Majesty will handle everything without me? She is still ten...' he sighed. The current queen was just a queen in name, he was the one who actually handled everything political, while also teaching the queen everything he knew. Basically, the survival of the Crimson Empire depended on him.

'No, no I should trust Orihime, she will definitely not let any enemy take advantage of her! No, why am I even thinking about this...' He tried to think of anything that could give him even a little bit of hope, but he couldn't find anything.

"I can't give up." he screamed as his eyes closed on their own, only for them to never open again.

Velmire Sevarin was dead.

Lucifer's face did not change, like it was obvious to him that no one could defeat him.

But then—

His face became tense.

He sharply turned his head and looked up, his dark red eyes glowing in the white ice, looking exactly like how one would imagine the king of devils.

Thick sweat appeared on Johan's forehead, Melodis's whole body shivered, both felt like their chest weighed 1000 kilograms.

'So this was why my instincts were flaring! It was not corruption like Melodis thought...' Johan bit his lips, regretting being ever born.

"Who are you?" Lucifer grinned, raising the Kratos high with a swing.