The Sorrow of Time's phantom was furious on Haru's behalf.
"That witch Temerith dares to provoke you, the noble you! Take out my body, shoot one arrow, and her projection is gone. Hundreds of millions of kilometers, one shot. Step outside the Endless Continent's Laws entirely and you could even detonate her actual body."
It wasn't wrong about the mechanics. Temerith was a mere late-stage Supreme Goddess, although stronger than Skarion, but not by a category-defining margin. In the previous battle, Haru had killed him with a single arrow while still at the late-stage himself. He was a peak Supreme God now so the math was straightforward.
He slapped the phantom aside and ignored the rest.
Shooting now would accomplish almost nothing. Temerith's real body was still in the abyss. Destroying her projection would barely inconvenience her. What it would do is reveal that the Sorrow of Time was in someone's hands on the Endless Continent. The moment the Twelve Demon Lords saw that bow, they would connect it to the Eye of the Abyss, the Demon Emperor's own top-level Supreme God Tier Artifact, also recently taken.
Two Demonic Artifacts stolen within a day of each other, by the same perpetrator. Haru's Great Aetherium would immediately become the primary target for the entire Demonic Army's opening offensive.
Not worth it. Definitely not for a projection. He raised his head and let his gaze travel hundreds of millions of kilometers across outer space, picking out the twelve projections one by one. The ancestors of the Succubi, Rock Demons, Shadow Demons, Winged Demons, Dark Night Demons, Soul Eaters, and the others.
All twelve lineages represented, all twelve projections standing in the blood sea, their combined presence pressing down on the Endless Continent like a physical weight.
He considered Temerith's invitation to meet at the Blood Moon. It was a trap, almost certainly. Arrive to return the artifact, find twelve Demon Monarchs waiting. The thought didn't especially worry him. Even against them, as a peak Supreme God and a Space-Time Lord with his Lord Type Artifact, he could easily escape.
Suppressing him required more than just numbers. Even all twelve combined would find it very difficult. But revealing himself and gaining nothing from it still made no sense. He had better plans for the twelve of them.
What he wanted was to face them on the battlefield, after their true bodies arrived, after the Endless Continent's wall cracked, after everything was in play. He wanted to know how strong they really were, these twelve who had swept the Endless Continent in the Ancient War.
And once he found out, he intended to kill them all, destroy their bodies, capture their souls into the Holy Grail, and convert them one by one into his own followers. Then he would wait for the Demon Emperor to arrive.
He'd quite like to see the expression on Aschenkranz's face when his twelve Demon Monarchs 'resurrected from the dead' and turned on him together.
But that would have to wait as the Shrine hasn't appeared yet and the Endless Continent's wall was intact. For now, he had time.
…
In the sea of blood near the Blood Moon, the twelve Demon Monarchs had gathered.
All eyes were on Temerith.
Her face was as flawless as her title as the ancestor of the succubus bloodline would imply. Her expression was not.
"My natal artifact is somewhere in the Endless Continent." She said, her dark-purple eyes burning, "I can feel it, I just can't pinpoint it. I can't lock onto who holds it."
This was the consequence of the forced re-mastering. If Haru hadn't broken her connection to the Sorrow of Time, she could have easily located it, down to the exact coordinate. Now she had nothing but a general sense of direction.
Steinherz, the Fourth Demon Lord, ancestor of the Rock Demons and the closest to Temerith among the twelve, spoke first, "It will surface eventually. Artifacts don't stay hidden forever."
"There's also the Eye of the Abyss." Said a demon lord wreathed in black mist, "Both artifacts were taken within a day of each other. That's not a coincidence, it's the same person."
The reasoning was sound. The Eye of the Abyss had been on the Arboriel, while the Sorrow of Time on the Endless Continent. Both of them have been stable for a hundred thousand years, then both were forcibly re-mastered within a single day.
The timing of the Eye's taking aligned exactly with the Castle Faction's sweep of Arboriel. Someone had been in that army, an alien Demon Lord, who ascended on a planet the Burning Legion had long since conquered, powerful enough to claim the Demon Emperor's own artifact and reckless enough to try.
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