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The demonic stands erupted into chaos the moment the black dome shattered.
For hours they had sat in frustrated silence, staring at that impenetrable barrier that Neron had erected around the battlefield. No sound escaped it. No light. No hint of the battle raging within. The demons of Hell—lesser imps and noble lords alike—had been forced to wait in agonizing ignorance, their collective fury mounting with every passing minute.
What was the point of a tournament if you couldn't watch the bloodshed?
But now the dome was gone. Not slowly—not fading or crumbling—but exploding outward in a shower of dark energy that scattered across the arena like dying stars. The barrier that had hidden the finale from their eyes was simply... gone.
And floating in the air above the shattered remnants stood Jason.
His feet rested on something none of them had ever seen before—an Ankh, massive and translucent, woven from threads of white and black magic that pulsed with power neither heavenly nor hellish. It rotated slowly beneath him, a platform of pure conceptual force, carrying him above the battlefield like a king surveying his domain.
Jason looked up.
Not at Neron. Not at the stunned Council members below him. Up at the sky, at the distant peaks of the arena, at the countless thousands of demonic eyes fixed upon his form.
"Death," he said, and his voice carried—not through volume, but through something deeper, something that resonated in the soul of every being that heard it, "has returned to claim thy souls."
His eyes swept across the crowd.
Just a glance. Just a moment. His gaze passed over one section of the arena—the lower stands, where lesser demons clustered for safety in numbers—and kept moving.
But in that single moment, every demon in Hell felt it.
The imps in the cheap seats. The nobles in their private boxes. The Demon Lords who had ruled territories for millennia. Mazikeen, daughter of Lucifer herself, who had dragged Jason out of Hell once before. The fallen angels who had followed Satan in his original rebellion. Even Ramiel and Duma—the two heavenly observers, the judges from above who had come to witness the crowning of Hell's new king.
Every single one of them felt something they had not felt since the dawn of creation.
Fear.
Instinctual. Primordial. Absolute.
For just a heartbeat, Jason's eyes changed. The brown irises vanished, replaced by hollow darkness—not black, but absence, the void between stars, the end of everything that lived and breathed and hoped. It lasted less than a second. Then they returned to normal, brown and human and unremarkable.
But every demon who saw it would carry that image until they died.
Jason looked down.
Below him, Neron stood amidst the shattered remnants of his Domain, Azazel, Beelzebub, and Belial flanking him like soldiers who had just realized their general's walls had crumbled. Their faces told the story—shock, confusion, the slow dawn of understanding that everything had just changed.
"You truly are the Devil, Neron." Jason's voice carried no anger now, only cold acknowledgment. "Truly treacherous and devilish. From the moment you activated your Domain, you locked our strongest abilities behind points—abilities that could have destroyed your courtroom in seconds. Then you used your wit and your wickedness to point my anger and my attacks toward you."
He descended slightly, the Ankh lowering him like an elevator from the gods.
"You made me forget." His eyes narrowed. "No—not forget. You made me never even consider the idea. Attacking the Domain itself. Why would I? Domains are inviolable. They're the ultimate technique. No one attacks the arena. No one even thinks to."
A short, sharp exhale that might have been a laugh.
"I was played. I admit it." He looked down at Neron with something almost like respect. "You had me. Completely. Utterly. If your arrogance hadn't made you summon your little council, I might have bled out in there without ever seeing the truth."
The Ankh stopped its descent, hovering twenty feet above the arena floor. Jason stood at its center, looking down at the four demons below.
"But from now on, there are no domains." His voice hardened. "It's you. And it's me."
...
"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!"
The voice crashed across the arena like a physical force—so angry, so vile, so disturbed that lesser demons clutched their heads and screamed. It shook the very stones of the colosseum, rattled the bones of every being present, demanded attention with the weight of divine authority.
Ramiel stood in the observers' box, his form radiating such intense fury that the air around him warped and distorted. Beside him, Duma watched in silence, his eternal quiet somehow more threatening than any outburst.
"HOW DARE YOU BREAK THE RULES!"
The accusation wasn't aimed at Jason.
It was aimed at Neron.
Every demon in the stands followed Ramiel's gaze and saw what the angel saw: Azazel, standing alive and whole. Beelzebub, buzzing with gathered flies. Belial, his sigils spinning slowly as he calculated how to survive this moment. Three demons who should have been dead. Three demons who had supposedly lost their matches earlier in the tournament.
Three demons who were very clearly, very obviously, still breathing.
The crowd erupted.
Cheating. There had been cheating. The tournament—their tournament, the one that would decide their new king—had been rigged from the start.
"What is it you desire, judges from heaven?" Jason's voice cut through the chaos like a blade through flesh. He didn't turn to face them, didn't acknowledge their fury with more than a glance over his shoulder. "The battle is still ongoing."
Ramiel's form crackled with barely contained power. "The rules were broken, Beyonder Human. We must interfere. We must make the battle equal."
At that, Jason did turn.
Slowly. Deliberately. His eyes found Ramiel's across the vast space of the arena, and in that gaze was something that made even the angel hesitate.
"Do not," Jason said quietly, "ruin this battle for me."
Ramiel's jaw tightened. "The rules—"
"You assume this is not equal?"
Jason's voice carried an edge now, something sharp and dangerous lurking beneath the calm surface. He turned fully to face the observers' box, his Anhk rotating to keep him centered.
"Bring all the demons of Hell together to face me today." His lips curved into a smile that held no warmth. "Bring every noble, every lord, every fallen angel who ever drew breath. Bring them all, Ramiel. And I will not be defeated."
He looked up—past the observers' box, past the highest seats, past the arena itself, toward the distant heavens that had long ago abandoned this place.
"For today, I conquered a Demon Lord." His voice rang across the arena. "I conquered the Angel of Death." He continued "And now, I shall conquer the Demon God himself."
His eyes dropped to Neron.
"Today, I am above all of heaven."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even Ramiel, for all his fury, found no words.
Jason turned back to face the Council below him. "Allow them to cheat." He shrugged slightly, the motion casual, unconcerned. "Cheating is within their nature. Don't tell me you didn't expect something like this." His eyes narrowed as they found Ramiel and Duma once more. "You bastards probably endorsed it."
He raised one hand in a dismissive wave.
"Now fuck off. I have a battle to finish."
Ramiel's form blazed with outrage. His mouth opened, power gathering on his lips—
And then it stopped.
He looked at Jason—really looked, seeing past the human exterior to something deeper, something that his angelic senses could barely comprehend. He saw the hollow darkness that had flickered in Jason's eyes moments ago. He felt the echo of that primordial fear that had gripped every demon in the arena.
He remembered, perhaps, that Death herself walked with this human.
His mouth closed.
Without another word, Ramiel turned. Light gathered around him and Duma, heavenly power preparing to transport them from this place. The last thing Jason saw before they vanished was Ramiel's eyes—burning with frustrated fury, but also with something else.
Caution.
Then they were gone.
Jason watched the space where they had been for a long moment, then turned back to the four demons below.
"Now then." His voice was almost conversational. "Where were we?"
Below him, Neron's face had finally lost its smile.
The battle was far from over. But for the first time since this began, the advantage had shifted.
And everyone in Hell knew it.
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If you Like this story! Check out my other story ! Shadow Monarch in Danmachi!
AND
If you wish to read more or simply support me just because ? than check out my patréon at
"https://www.patréon.com/Riadooo"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want !