Chapter 16 – Hell But Not Hell
"Get up you idiot." Aki started to kick Denji's lifeless body on the floor.
It was only after a few seconds of kicking when he suddenly jumped up and pulled the trigger on his chest.
"HAA! Where's the devil." A chainsaw appeared from his head, a very small chainsaw.
"..."
"..."
"..."
The first one to interrupt the silence was Quanxi, who was probably one of the more mature ones in the group.
"You are probably low on blood."
"Huh? Who are you?"
"My name's Quanxi, and these are my women, Long and Pingtsi. I request a truce and to work together to get out of here."
"I'm Aki, this is Denji, Power, Angel and apparently Denji's lover but I don't know her name. Why are they freaking out though?"
There were more people, but Aki didn't know them so he didn't bother.
It was as he said. Ever since they got into this weird place, the fiends and co were suffering complete nervous breakdowns.
"Angel, what's happening?"
"We're in Hell. We're actually in Hell."
"Hell?"
"All devils come here after death."
"Can we escape?"
"Escape? Are you mad? There are devils here that are infinitely stronger than the Gun devil. The ones that have not known death ever since they were born, the Primal fears. We're so fucked."
As if waiting for an introduction, as he finished explaining, a door opened in the sky, and a black blob of darkness appeared.
Strengthening their will, the group ready themselves to fight. As the dark mist surrounds them, a row of even parts of things in astronaut suits praying appeared in front of the devil.
The devil would've toyed with them and draw at the battle a bit, but ever since that incident, it has become more paranoid and cautious. It wanted to go back to somewhere not out in the open, aka its safe zone.
This meant that before anyone even comprehended what they were doing, an invisible shock vibrated through the air and tore everything in its way to pieces. It was only after Beam's and Denji's noble sacrifice? that the injuries weren't fatal.
Readying another attack, a sword appeared in the devils hand, obviously this swing would be more powerful than the previous one.
But its worst fears came true.
The mysterious girl, Reze, survived. She knew that no one was the devil's match.
Entertaining? I would like to know if this is entertaining enough.
She crushed the imaginary trigger inside her mind, and a strong gust soon formed behind them.
However, it was still not quick enough as everyone got sliced, and multiple people died.
If there were good news however, the darkness devil didn't continue but just stood there with it's skull-eyes narrowing and focusing on the unnatural wind.
Then, everyone present suddenly felt dizzy and powerless, before they all collapsed on the floor, but miraculously their limbs began to connect back to the main body, providing that they were alive.
The last one awake, and was about to sleep, was Aki, and he caught a glimpse of the figure forming.
"Rimuru?" A million questions appeared in his head, but unfortunately they were left unanswered as his mind sunk into nothing.
"This mythology power is actually great. It's like multipurposeful in a way. The power I just used was Ascelpius the Greek god of healing and it worked a wonder."
Rimuru didn't immediately start fighting when he appeared, but observed and healed the remaining people. He was not merciful, but he wasn't heartless either, well, not metaphorically heartless anyway.
"How are you doing on this fine evening, or morning?" he began to make a conversation, and the darkness devil replied by a shoving a sword into Rimuru's face.
He tilted his head to the left and narrowly avoid the blow by a width of a hair.
"Hercules." He then gave a kick and blasted the devil miles in the opposite direction.
"Hermes." He then arrived in front of him in the blink of an eye punched the devil into the air, and twisted his body, putting his entire weight on his fist and shoved it into the devil's ribs. A mini-explosion erupted in the air, as the devil went plummeting into the ground.
Despite this one-sided beating however, the devil seemed to be alright.
"Hmm? As expected, a primal devil is tougher than I thought it would be. These measly attacks wouldn't do much."
The devil stared at him deeply.
"The thing is, I don't want to kill you, since according to the world's will, you will appear on the surface and that would do more harm than good, but then I want to defeat you, and what other way it there than to kill you?"
"Ahhh, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Is that what the others would say?"
The darkness devil just stared on, not attacking but staying very vigilant.
Although Rimuru's previous attacks didn't do much damage, it's senses are telling the devil that the person in front was very dangerous.
However, being one of the strongest devils, it had it's own pride, and it felt insulted and furious at the fact that he was toying with it.
Firming his fear and ignoring his sixth sense, it disappeared from it's place and zoomed right in front of Rimuru, this time going all out.
A sonic boom happened as the devil swung it's bone-sword so fast and powerfully it broke the speed of sound.
The result completely shocked it however, as it didn't expect that it would actually hit and cut him in half.
But then to its confusion, it's own body became what Rimuru looked like – cut in half – and Rimuru appeared perfectly normal.
Once again, ignoring the half of it's body on the floor, the darkness devil swung out but this time it met nothing. It then tried to readjust itself to receive something as it expected the opponent would take advantage of this imbalance, but it then found itself in pitch black darkness, ironic since it was the darkness devil.
But then a light appeared in front of it, and in the span of a second, a universe suddenly expanded and the devil saw countless stars being born and destroyed in the void.
Still not lowering it's guard, it pushed of a stray rock floating and propelled itself in a direction, trying to find the end since it suspected that this was an illusion, but it really seemed to never end.
After a while, the devil suddenly experienced a pull effect and felt it's body being teared apart by numeral forces.
It then found itself in a void, a true dark place of nothingness.
An object glittened in the distance. As the devil concentrated it's eyes, or vision since it didn't have eyes, the object appeared clearer and clearer, and it soon had a visible appearance. It looked like a human figure, neither male nor female, just a head, body and 4 obvious limbs. However, the 'corpse' was made of stars, and the entire figure seemed to be made out of a universe.
Being momentarily entranced, the devil soon broke out of it's daze only to find that the corpse was unnervingly closer to it than he expected.
The floating speed was slow, but was absolutely getting closer and closer.
The devil tried to move, but this time there was nothing to jump off in this zone of zero gravity.
It could only watch in terror as the body got closer and closer. It didn't realise that slowly, it's mind became more and more human, and he began to feel more and more fear. Eventually, the bone body it had had started to grow flesh, and facial features became more apparent.
Until, the darkness devil looked completely human, and blood started to flow out of 'his' eyes, nose, mouth and ears.
He then began to feel untold pain and horror as now the 'universe corpse' was in front of him, then everything went black.
It's been a while since I've had to deal with someone who had incurred the wrath of lord Rimuru personally. I wonder what they did...
A violet-haired girl was watching this spectacle through a glass orb in her office. She was in a happy mood since she finally had someone else to torture instead of the usuals from years ago. Truth be told she had already gotten bored of torturing them, so she gave them to her subordinates.
She was one of Rimuru's twelve guardian lords, and the warden of Tempest Prison, Ultima.
...
Normally, when he sends someone to Ultima, he would watch what happens and how they would react, but he was also in a not so ideal situation, because a spiral-eyed female stood in front of him.
"Rimuru."
"Makima."
Seconds after dealing with the devil, a portal opened and the hell devil dropped Makima right here, hoping both could kill each other and it will be freed of such terrifying existences in it's realm.
"I have quite a lot of questions."
"Really? Am I obliged to answer?"
"No but I hope you will answer them anyway."
"Umm, okay."
"One, do you know such things such as nuclear bombs, world war two and the black death?"
"Yeah?"
"Hmm, as expected. Two, the real question now, are you from this world?"
"Why?"
"Simple. Because I am a devil as well. I am the control devil, Makima. A few months ago I felt something strange, then I noticed other supernatural occurrences, even though know one else did. Beings stronger than I am now walk the streets as if it's nothing. I assume you have something to do with this then?"
"Umm sure kinda." It wasn't me but Ciel.
"I will not ask why or how, but," she looked at the people in the ground, "you made a contract with her right? Reze, the bomb devil."
"Yup."
"Good, I wish to make a contract with you then."
"...A contract? You sure you want to?"
"Yes. I don't know if you are a devil or not, but since you were able to contract with Reze then you must want something from her right? What can someone like Reze offer to a being like you? Someone who has everything? Then I understood,
Entertainment."
Rimuru at this point, although showing no change on his face, was full of praise inside.
She is really smart. Interesting...
She still continued talking even though she made her point, "I once read in a human book that those who stand at the top are often bored or lonely. Which billionaire is genuinely happy after all. Knowing this, I wish to make a contract with you.
I will give you all my memories from this life, and my past selves. I will also give you everything I have and everything I own from this life, and I will also give you as much entertainment as possible from here on out."
He raised an eyebrow, "and what do you want from me?"
She took a deep breath but with the same smile on her face, "no interference. In return for what I just said, you will rewind time to before you interfered with the devil hunters, even rewinding my time. You will not appear on that road, and join the devil hunters. You are a powerful being, so I assume you are capable of this."
Rimuru just nodded and listened on.
"You will also not interfere with any devils, or devil hunters, and let natural history play it's course. You can watch us as much as you'd like, and when I die, that is when the contract ends and you will be able to take everything. That is what I wish to have in return."
"That's quite the contract."
"Indeed."
"...Very well, I accept."
Both shook hands, and then Makima felt a profound source of energy come from Rimuru, before everything became white.
...
"Aki, this is Denji. You will be in charge of him from now on."
Makima comfortably sat on her chair and smiled at Aki.
...
"Hey Rimuru from the future, what did I do?"
Rimuru was in the café when such a message popped up.
It seems this was the time that past me asked about, must've been something to do with the time travel reversal thing I asked Ciel to do.
"Opened a café." He replied.
...
"NOOO!" A certain violet-haired demon collapsed onto the floor.
Tears started to form in her eyes.
"My l-lord *sob *sob, why would you do this to me? *sob. M-my new toy..."
Despite being unfathomably old, that night she wailed like a baby, which luckily Testarossa and Carrera didn't see.