Devil Slave (Satan system)

Perseus let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Relief—unexpected, but real—flowed through him at Tomato's reckless laughter. Her mockery had shaken loose the dread, giving him a spark of hope where none had been.

Then she jabbed a clawed finger toward the looming angel. Her grin widened.

"Can't you see? It is a mere weakling."

Perseus followed her gaze. The colossal eye still blazed, but its glare was not as sharp as before, its holy radiance flickering with strain. A titan still, yes—but no longer untouchable. His heart tightened.

There was a way.

"That weapon you fired from Earth," Tomato said, her voice alive with hunger, "can you use it again?"

Without hesitation, Perseus pressed a hand to his ear and called down to the Earth-bound command. Static crackled, then a reply came back sharp and hurried:

"It's possible. Cooldown window is five minutes. After that, it needs thirty before we can fire again."

Perseus relayed the words.

"Good!" Tomato barked, laughter rumbling in her throat. "So I get five minutes of fun. Whatever happens, make sure that thing fires again in five minutes." She licked her lips, eyes flashing with savage delight, and without another word she launched upward like a meteorite.

The angel's eye swiveled instantly, its pupil locking onto her as though she were the only threat worth noticing. Its radiance grew, and then—BOOM—a lance of rainbow-white light streaked from its gaze, searing the sky as it thundered toward her.

"Tomato!" Perseus screamed her name.

But she only laughed, baring her fangs in a grin of pure savagery. "COME ON, YOU BLIND BASTARD! I'LL SHOVE YOUR HOLY GAZE RIGHT UP YOUR OWN ASS! YOU THINK YOU CAN BLIND ME? I'LL MAKE YOU CRY BLOOD BEFORE I'M DONE!"

Her curses cracked across the battlefield like war drums. And then she surged forward, headlong into the torrent of light.

Her fists blurred. A storm of punches exploded outward, each strike colliding with the path of the one before it, amplifying the impact again and again. The space split with a deafening crack-crack-crack, and the overlapping force cascaded in a compounding wave of destruction.

The dark rainbow beam buckled. Fragments of its radiance splintered away, torn apart by sheer raw force. The effect was staggering—the kind of physical paradox that bent the laws of nature.

The battlefield gasped. Voices rose in awe, even among the gods who moments ago had hung back in suspicion. Odin himself stood rooted, his one good eye wide with surprise.

Tomato. The newest of the Lenny family. He had dismissed her as little more than a stray—a devil with no magic, no worth beyond Lenny's mercy. A branded thing, pitiful but protected.

And yet here she was, annihilating a divine beam with nothing but her fists.

Scholars back on Earth scrambled to explain it in broken shouts over their channels. They pointed to compounding force, to kinetic stacking, to the impossible momentum of strikes feeding endlessly into the next—an exponential cascade of raw physics. Each punch multiplied the velocity and pressure of the last, until her blows carried a force no beam could withstand.

Such a feat should have torn her arms apart, shattered her bones, obliterated her flesh. But Tomato was not normal. She was never normal.

She was laughing.

And she was winning.

The angel's colossal eye quivered, its pupil contracting sharply as Tomato's relentless fists battered through its radiant beam. For the first time since it had appeared, the thing seemed strained. The holy blaze that had once been steady and all-consuming now flickered, warping around her storm of blows.

Its light faltered. Its voice—if it had one—did not rise, but the silence of its titanic body screamed louder than thunder. For the first time, the Fallen angel felt something it had not known in countless eons: resistance.

Odin's one good eye narrowed. His lips curled into a thin smile as realization struck him like lightning. Opportunity.

"Now," he barked, raising Gungnir high. His voice cut across the battlefield, sharp as steel. "All gods! All avatars! Strike the eye! Bury it beneath our divinity!"

Perseus's face drained of color. "No! Wait—don't!" His voice broke as he screamed, veins bulging in his neck. He could feel it, clearer than anyone else—the wrongness of this move, the trap in plain sight.

But Odin only grinned wider, his scarred face lit with the hunger of ancient war. He thrust his spear forward. "Advance!"

The heavens answered. Legions of gods, shining in their avatars, erupted in a charge, their war cries echoing through the cosmos. Divine weapons flared. Celestial fire raged. Beams of golden radiance and blades of starlight hurtled toward the eye, converging in a storm of godhood.

Perseus screamed again, but his words were swallowed by the roar of divine might.

And in that instant, he knew.

This was a mistake. A terrible mistake.

The heavens themselves seemed to ignite as the gods hurled their might toward the colossal eye. Blades of dawnfire, rivers of celestial lightning, spears of crystallized starlight—all of it converged on the monstrous orb.

For a heartbeat, it looked like victory. The battlefield glowed with brilliance beyond measure, a chorus of divine hymns thundering across the void.

And then—something shifted.

The divine storm froze mid-flight, unraveling into threads of gold, blue, and crimson. Slowly, inexorably, the light bent back toward the eye. The beams, the flames, the spears—they were pulled into it, swallowed whole like rivers down a drain.

The eye drank.

Gods screamed as their weapons dimmed, their bodies trembling as their very divinity was leeched out of them. Radiance cracked from their flesh like shattered glass. Avatars collapsed into shadows.

Odin's one good eye widened in horror. His spear faltered in his grasp as he staggered back. "What… what is this!?"

He did not understand.

But Perseus did.

His fists clenched until his knuckles bled. The pieces slid into place, a terrible truth aligning in his mind. This was why Tomato had laughed, why she had called the angel a weakling.

The earlier attack—the wave of rainbow light that had shattered minds—had not been a test of will at all. No. It had only torn through them because of what lived inside their veins: magic.

It wasn't strength the eye had targeted. It was fuel.

The rule was as old as the cosmos itself: energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed.

And this abomination, this angel, understood that law better than any of them.

It had resurrected its brethren after Father Black had slain them. That should have been impossible—unless it had a well of holy power vast enough to cheat death. Such a feat should have drained it nearly dry. And it had. That was why its beam earlier had felt weaker, why its gaze had flickered.

And why Tomato was beyond confident when confronting it. She was its natural bane because she had no magic in her veins.

When Perseus had endured that rainbow storm, he realized his soul had borne the brunt while his body resisted. But the gods, standing far behind, had not noticed the truth.

And now they had rushed forward, not as warriors, but as offerings.

They had presented themselves like living batteries to a starving, draining beast.

Perseus's stomach turned to stone. His voice cracked with fury as he shouted into the void—

"This is bad."