After a hearty meal, Samael naturally dumped the cleanup duty on the two foolish birds and took over Circe's carefully arranged little hut for himself. Settling in, he used the information gathered from their earlier conversation to organize his thoughts.
As the saying goes: when the Way rises, the demon wanes; when the demon rises, the Way declines. His constant struggle with the Greek pantheon had somehow turned into a slow, turn-based match.
On one side, the Waterside Treehouse had just hidden the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena. On the other, near the Arima Caverns, Typhon, the King of Monsters, emerged once more...
Here, Medusa had just gained the authority of the Earth Mother, while there, Typhon's children were forced to venture out, pretending to serve the gods...
Here, he and Prometheus had worked together to hasten the birth of humanity, dividing the divine ranks and quickening the fall of the Age of Gods; yet there, Zeus and the Olympians, under the guise of harvesting faith, forced humanity into endless sacrifices, driving prophets straight into their traps...
Here, Prometheus had stalled Zeus with Polos's half-truths; but once the wise King of Gods freed his hands, he threw out Pandora's Box—letting humanity destroy itself.
Because of that one miscalculation, Samael had been forced to take a great risk, revealing himself and carrying that cursed object away from the earth to save mankind from extinction.
Tch. Setting aside power, in terms of scheming, we're all players of the same league.
The ancient serpent looked up at the star-filled sky, lips curling in quiet mockery.
Back then, while trying to take Pandora's Box toward the faraway Oceanus—beyond the reach of both mortals and sky gods—he and Tina had unknowingly drifted into the deep sea. The current carried them all the way to Aeaea, where they happened upon the exiled harpy.
Since this island was isolated far offshore, news from the mainland rarely reached them. Samael knew little about Athena's situation, or humanity's current state.
As for how long he had been unconscious—none of the three girls, who paid little attention to time, could tell.
Judging by the layer of rock crust encasing his body, the ancient serpent estimated at least a hundred years had passed.
Come to think of it, the reason he had slept so long was because of the thing stirring inside his belly.
As Samael pondered this, something within him stirred. Crimson-black markings erupted from his abdomen, spreading wildly outward. A dense, suffocating malice filled the air, and the temperature inside the hut dropped several degrees in an instant.
Again?
Samael's face darkened. He drew a deep breath and rushed out of the hut, into the open clearing before it. His body expanded to a hundred meters, revealing his true, colossal form.
The coiled primordial serpent resonated with divine power and opened his massive jaws toward the ground.
A torrent of crimson-black sludge gushed out, pooling into a lake that reeked of pure malice.
Hum—
A pulse of dread shuddered through the earth as ripples spread across the lake's surface. From within, a shifting, jet-black cube slowly took form, rising higher as its size grew.
Moments later, the object twisted like a self-turning Rubik's Cube. Dull red magical patterns crawled across its surface, forming a web of ominous sigils.
Finally, the darkness inside ignited. A pool of crimson-black liquid rose to the top, congealing into a silhouette wrapped in a cocoon of viscous, blood-dark mud.
Trying to crawl out? As you wish.
Samael immediately shifted into human form. Curling his fingers, he summoned a javelin of dark-gold divine script into his hand. He stomped the ground and lunged forward.
The earth split beneath his feet, black fissures tearing hundreds of meters outward. As he hurled the spear, the entire floating island quaked, nearly throwing Circe and Harpy off balance.
The dark-gold spear streaked across the sky like a blazing meteor.
Buzz!
The black cube emitted a violent hum. Crimson magical lines flared to life as hundreds of beams of light shot out, attempting to block the spear.
But with every pulse of divine wedges along its shaft, the javelin pierced through the barriers one after another, unstoppable—driving straight toward the red-and-black cocoon, whose humanoid outline was now faintly visible.
Crack!
Just as the spearhead was about to pierce the membrane, a sharp, crystalline sound echoed from within. A pale, slender arm tore through the red-black fetal sheath encasing it.
"Gotcha!"
The pale little hand seized the weapon aimed at her, gripping it tightly. Crimson-black patterns spread rapidly from the point of contact, as if she had just acquired a dangerous new toy. The sound, once clear like jade striking jade, now carried a sickly madness and frenzy that sent a chill crawling down one's spine.
"If you want it, it's yours."
Samael blinked, a sinister curve tugging at the corners of his lips. His right hand rose, fingers spreading wide before clenching into a fist. At the same time, his lips parted as he shouted with solemn authority.
"Mandate of Heaven: Stripping!"
In that instant, the dark-golden patterns forming the javelin detonated outward. Like a storm of meteors, they shot forth, blasting the outer cocoon to pieces. With a thunderous impact, the fragments embedded themselves into the body of the Calamity Daughter born from the demonic box.
Thud!
The figure atop Pandora's Box was hurled backward by the shockwave, tracing a tragic arc through the air before crashing into the churning crimson-black mire below.
Samael exhaled faintly and allowed a cold smile to creep across his face. The Seven Deadly Sins were the very original sins he had planted in humankind, and the Tablet of Destinies held a natural counter against them.
Without such countermeasures, why would the ancient serpent ever have expelled Pandora's Box from his own body? Keeping that thing inside had always been a ticking threat. Now, with both time and place in his favor, it was the perfect opportunity to resolve it once and for all.
"Ugh... it hurts..."
Pandora, the newly born Daughter of Calamity, struggled to lift herself from the mire. Her hands pressed against the spots where wedge-shaped divine runes were embedded, faint halos of dark gold shimmering beneath her touch. Her fingers traced the marks as she bit her lip, murmuring weakly through soft whimpers, pitiful and delicate.
Her pale, beautiful face was twisted in pain, silver hair cascading loosely over her shoulders. Those ruby eyes, gleaming faintly in the darkness, carried a charm that could drown the soul.
For a moment, both Harpy and Circe's eyes lost focus—they stood frozen, entranced.
At the same time, when Samael saw the exquisite face beneath that veil of silver hair, his expression faltered. Words slipped out before he realized.
"My... wife?"
But the instant the ancient serpent spoke, his mind wavered. Those ruby eyes flickered once—and then filled his entire vision, flooding his consciousness until there was nothing else.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
In Samael's sight, vast black celestial spheres drifted through the void, their edges seething with crimson-black mud, pouring pure malice onto a ravaged earth below. Every trace of light was devoured.
"Hehe, you devoured me before. Now, I'll devour you."
The words, sweet and delighted, left her lips in a singsong whisper. The figure stepped out from the crimson-black swamp, smiling as she spread her arms wide. She drew the serpent—the one who had dared to stop her birth—into an embrace, pressing his head into the furnace of her heart.
Soon, pure malevolence would consume and dissolve the prey caught within her arms.