The elegant smile on Mephisto's face froze completely.
He looked at the skeleton before him, burning with pale blue flames, and felt that things were spiraling out of control.
God knows how much strength that spirit of vengeance, whom he had tortured for so many years, would exert.
The flames on Johnny's body were no longer the fires of Hell, no longer filled with curses and rage.
"How... how on earth did you break the curse? What exactly are you? How is this possible?" Panic crept into Mephisto's voice.
Johnny did not answer.
He simply raised a hand burning with pale blue flames and lashed his whip toward Mephisto.
Mephisto, however, let out a shrill scream.
The pale blue flames burned on him like maggots on a bone. He felt the shield composed of those souls—the barriers sufficient to withstand physical and energy attacks—melt silently like snow under the sun the moment they touched that blue fire.
That fire did not burn his body; it burned the power he relied on for existence and the souls bound by contracts!
"No!!"
Mephisto went completely mad, like a deathbed struggle! He controlled this body, mobilizing all soul energy into waves of mental shocks that surged toward Johnny.
Johnny just stood there calmly.
The shocks that could corrode souls were purified by the flames surrounding him as they came within a meter of his body, dissipating into the air.
Johnny moved.
He was no longer the Beast that only knew how to charge madly.
Walking toward Mephisto step by step, the pale blue flames beneath his feet dyed the ground with a layer of holy light.
"My knight, stop! I command you! No, no, I can return your father's soul to you." Mephisto retreated slowly.
Johnny tilted his Skull, which was burning with blue soul-fire, as if considering it.
In the next second, Johnny's soul flew out of his body, wrapped in a pair of wings.
Johnny's body raised its hand and suddenly set the flames ablaze upon his own soul.
A wisp of black smoke vanished in the flames.
Mephisto froze.
His contract with Johnny was broken.
"No... impossible..."
Before he could react from the shock, Johnny was already in front of him.
A hand burning with pale blue flames pressed gently against his chest.
"Goodbye. My freedom and my future! Give them all back to me!"
A cold, emotionless syllable escaped Johnny's mouth.
Boom—!
The pale blue flames erupted instantly, swallowing Mephisto's entire body.
There were no painful howls, no violent struggles.
That powerful Marionettist body, transformed from a piece of scum and capable of holding a demigod's soul, began to crumble inch by inch in the pale blue flames like scrap iron thrown into a steel furnace.
Muscle, bone, and skin... all matter was slowly decomposing.
Even Mephisto's massive, filthy soul was scorched in this fire of Judgement, its sins stripped away bit by bit, reducing it to the purest spiritual body.
His power was dissipating.
His existence was fading away.
At the quarry in the distance, Hulk reverted to his Banner form, quietly watching this scene.
Natasha's hand holding the sniper rifle trembled slightly, but in the next second, it became firm as she continued to snipe the cultists Mephisto had brought.
Just as Mephisto's avatar was about to be completely purified and turned into nothingness.
Lin Huai moved.
His face was filled with calm.
"Stop, Johnny. The rest is up to me."
Lin Huai connected his Spirit Thread to Mephisto's soul while chanting in Hermes Language.
"The Fool that doesn't belong to this era;"
"The mysterious ruler above the gray fog;"
"The king of yellow and black who wields good luck."
Gray fog surged wildly in his eyes, as he pushed the Marionettist's abilities to their limit, while the gray fog on Sefirah Castle churned frantically to replenish his spirituality.
As the words fell, a massive amount of spirituality surged toward Mephisto along Lin Huai's Spirit Thread.
Invisible Spirit Thread wrapped densely around Mephisto's remains.
The blue flames slowly died out, and Mephisto's remains gradually ceased their struggle.
What a perfect marionette! A marionette with the authority of Hell.
Mephisto's blurred consciousness let out a final roar.
"No, no, no! I can honor you as my master, just let me go. Sign the contract immediately, don't!"
He would rather become a slave than simply perish.
But in the face of the Fool's power, his resistance was meaningless.
The Spirit Thread, like the most skillful knitting needles, gathered, compressed, and reshaped his dissipating soul energy bit by bit.
A handsome young man in a black tailcoat with red pupils slowly took shape within the pale blue flames.
The ritual was complete.
The moment the marionette took shape, Lin Huai felt his connection to that mysterious space above the gray fog become tighter than ever before.
In a rift in time, the smile on Amon's face, who had been watching all this with interest, stiffened slightly.
"Oh?"
Just then, a figure appeared silently in the center of the battlefield.
It was an ordinary-looking priest with blond hair, a short beard, and eyes as deep as the Universe.
It was Adam.
Adam glanced at Lin Huai below, who had just finished his advancement, his calm eyes showing no ripples.
He simply raised His hand and, in an emotionless tone as if stating an objective fact, slowly announced to all beings, those who could hear and those who could not:
"Witnessed by many Spectators, Lin Huai has completed a great play."
"With the body of a Sequence 5, he murdered a descended Hell Lord, completing a brilliant performance."
"And using this as the advancement ritual, he advances to Sequence 4—Bizzaro Sorcerer."
The voice was very calm, stating a simple fact, echoing in the depths of everyone's soul.
Banner, Natasha, and Johnny, and even the mother and son hiding in the container, at this moment, all heard this oracle-like proclamation.
The proclamation finished, Adam glanced at Amon, who still looked unsatisfied, and shook His head.
His figure, along with Amon's, slowly faded and finally vanished from the spot.
The terrifying pressure shrouding all of Eastern Europe dissipated along with them.
The quarry returned to silence.
The potion materials Lin Huai had been carrying flew out, shattering and blending together into a mass of inexplicable jelly-like substance.
Lin Huai swallowed it in one gulp.
The Sequence bottleneck shattered with a bang.
A massive amount of knowledge and eerie power, like a bursting flood, surged wildly into his mind.
The air around him began to warp, light became illogical, and his figure flickered rapidly between reality and illusion, as if he might vanish from this World at any moment... Lin Huai successfully advanced, becoming a Sequence 4 demigod!
The cultists at the scene either went mad or died.
On the battlefield remained the exhausted Banner and Natasha, along with Johnny, who still burned with pale blue flames and stood quietly in place.
And, standing in the center of the battlefield, looking at his new marionette with an expression of relief... Lin Huai.
The stage play thus came to an end.