Demons.
Beings of darkness and sin, not to be mistaken with devils, for there were older than devils, older than the rebellion, older than even the fall of first fallen himself. One should never mistake them for devils. There was a difference, a very important one.
While the common tongue often used the terms interchangeably, Demons existed long before the Morning Star ever dreamt of defiance. In the beginning, when the Father of Angels shaped existence and forged the heavens, the Pit formed as a necessary, echoing opposite to His infinite light.
It was a formless, consuming abyss where the shadows themselves had weight. From that lightless pit, the first demons were born, not as creatures with souls, but as manifestations of primordial instinct, raw power, and an unquenchable, entropic will.
They were the universe's first nightmares, breathing in the cold vacuum of the void before the first sun was ever sparked.
Then came Lucifer, Samael fell. After his catastrophic fall from grace, plunging through the spheres into the Pit that would later come to be known as Hell, the Lightbringer did not simply wither in the dark.
He conquered it.
Bringing the chaotic, jagged domain under his heel with his wife, Lilith, he transformed the formless abyss into a structured kingdom of pain and ambition.
Together, they harnessed the raw, agonizing power of the Pit to remake his fellow fallen kin, those angels who had traded their golden wings for the soot of rebellion, into the 72 Great Demons of the Ars Goetia.
Losing their grace as they tossed away their celestial forms into demonic creatures, they were forged anew, their essences fused with the primordial dark of the Pit.
With them and the legions of demons Lucifer had subjugated, Lucifer ruled Hell with an iron fist, but still, the devil king had felt that the demons were lacking in something.
Demons were titans of power, but they lacked the spark of natural reproduction. They could not multiply, well, not in the way other creatures could, not to say a miracle could not happen once in a while.
To solve this, Lucifer and Lilith crafted a middle ground, a bridge between the immortal demon and the fertile mortal. They used the 72, infusing them with a measure of Lucifer's stolen light and a fragment of Lilith's dark fertility to create the Devil race.
Each devil clan became a living legacy of one of the 72, carrying the diluted but potent blood of their progenitor. With this now self-sustaining army, Lucifer finally had the numbers to wage a war that would make the stars tremble.
Lucian's fingers traced the edge of his boat as he ruminated on the carnage of the past. He knew that most of the original 72 were dead now, most fell during the Great War, killed by the angels of the lord or the fallens of Azazel.
Those who survived the slaughter were dragged back into the deepest reaches of Hell and sealed behind gates forged from the stuff of stars.
Of course, not all the demons were trapped in hell. No. There were some that escaped and were now in the underworld with the devil race. Some like the original Bael, who was now calling himself Zekram, or The demon germory Runeas.
One had to be careful never to mistake Hell for the Underworld. The Underworld was the domain of Hades, the god of the Underworld and various other death gods. During the height of his power, Lucifer had simply marched into that grey domain and carved out a massive, bleeding portion of it to house his burgeoning Devil race.
The death gods had watched in silent, impotent fury. What could they do? To challenge the Lightbringer at his zenith was not a battle, it was a complicated form of suicide. It would have only ended with them all dead, and they all knew it.
This world was no "High School DxD" fantasy. This was not the boob fantasy that was in the anime and light novels. This reality was closer to the brutal, visceral landscapes of The Demonic Paradise or the horrors of DC Comics.
Here, angels, fallen and devils, weren't some misunderstood creatures or some powerless beings that would be relying on kids to do things for them. No, here a single angel could change the landscape of a world if it ever decided to act. Things weren't like the anime at all.
Lucifer himself was the ultimate enigma. He wasn't dead, yet he had vanished. A few decades after the Great War ended in a stalemate that left all three factions, Angels, Devils, and Fallen, in rivers of blood, the Lightbringer simply stepped off his throne and vanished, with not a single soul knowing where he was until this very day.
In his absence, the power vacuum he had left had sparked a civil war. With Asmodeus trapped in hell, Beelzebub dead, and Leviathan not even giving a damn about their race and just watching from the sidelines in the underworld, their descendant decided to take the throne and wanted to continue the war, a foolish thing for Lucian.
That had now led to the civil war, which eventually led to the throne of the underworld being filled by the "New Satans," figures like Sirzechs Lucifer, Serafall Leviathan, Ajuka Beelzebub, and Falbium Asmodeus.
There was also the propaganda that "Sirzechs is ten times stronger than the original Lucifer." Lucian had once spoken to an ancient devil veteran who had fought in the trenches of the Great War, who stayed in the same town as him. The old man had laughed so hard he nearly fell over.
"The boy is a prodigy, certainly," the veteran had wheezed, coughing. "But he is a candle pretending to be a star. Compared to the Old demons, he pales. And compared to the Morning Star? He is but a speck of dust waiting for a breeze that never comes."
Lucian could have brushed aside those words as just glazing, but this devil had survived the great war and the civil war, so he took those words to heart. It was why he pushed himself, Back when he was in the underworld, he knew the world was not on easy mode, and didn't want to die young. And now he had his ancestor trying to spy on his life.
He sighed. 'Just focus on the present and leave the future to future,' he thought to himself.
Two Months Later
The sun beat down on the deck of a pirate ship as He floated a few dozen feet above the deck, his black wings providing a lazy, rhythmic lift. Below him, the crew of the "Iron-Fang Pirates" were discovering that there were things in the sea far more terrifying than the Marines.
"Please! Spare us! We have gold! We have women!" a pirate screamed, clutching a stump where his arm used to be.
Lucian didn't even blink.
Ten golden ripples appeared in the air behind him as chains of shimmering gold erupted like striking vipers. piercing through everyone, not fast enough to dodge, the sound of meat being punctured and bone shattering filled the air.
The captain of the crew, a man whose bounty had reached 100 million Berries, stood amidst the corpses of his men. He was a mountain of a man, his sword coated in a layer of Armament Haki. He was fast for his size, dodging the initial wave of chains and closing the distance toward Lucian with a roar that shook the rigging.
He leapt into the air, his blade coming down in a vertical cleave that carried enough force to split a building. Lucian simply raised a brow at him. Chains swirled in front of him, weaving themselves into an interlocking shield. The Haki-coated blade struck the golden chain with a deafening CLANG, sending sparks flying, but the shield chains didn't even budge.
Lucian looked the captain in the eye. The man had "good" Haki for the first half of the Grand Line, but still wasn't all that impressive. Lucian himself had gotten to a level of armament haki that already surpassed the fool of a man who seemed to still charge at him.
"Die, monster!" the captain screamed, his Observation Haki flaring as he sensed more chains rising from the deck planks beneath his feet. He rolled, narrowly avoiding being impaled, and charged again. "Come down here and face me, you bastard".
Lucian descended slowly, folding his wings with a snap as He picked up a discarded sword from the deck. "You talk a lot for someone who has already lost."
The captain charged, maybe to some, he might have looked like a blur, but to Lucian, he might have as well been a snail.
Lucian didn't take a single step. He moved his arm, the blade in his hand catching the captain's heavy strikes and guiding them into the empty air. Parrying each strike like it was nothing because to him it was now, he had spent his time getting stronger, and this man was not someone who could compare to him now, even physically.
The captain grew more frantic, his swings becoming wider, as he no doubt started to understand that this was the end for him.
"Monster... what are you?" the captain gasped. How could a child be this strong? He shook his head, not possible, not possible.
Lucian didn't answer. He swung his sword once in a flash of silver. The wave created by his swing tore through the air, cutting the captain in half, but it didn't stop as it continued through the mast, the railing, and carved a trench into the sea itself that took several seconds to close.
Lucian dropped the broken sword. He had spent the last two months hunting like this, making deals with desperate men and women. He hadn't been as lucky as he was when he started, like getting devil fruits or finding talent, but he still made deals for a portion of strength, stamina, speed, and life span.
He had traded for five years of a navigator's lifespan here, a portion of a brawler's strength there. Individually, the gains were minor, but he had done it over a hundred times already, the number of greedy people in the world was staggering after all. His body felt stronger, his reflexes sharper, but still, he hadn't met anyone impressive yet.
But he was patient, sooner or later, something would come to him. And that later seemed to be now.
The "pull" he felt later that afternoon was unlike anything he had experienced. It meant that the person's desire to make a deal with him was great.
Standing up and straightening his clothes, he let himself be pulled towards the call.
When the world shifted, he was standing on a ship, a ship with a black flag and a skull. In this world, that could be a thousand possibilities, but this particular skull had a white beard on it.
Yes, he was standing on the Moby Dick. Whitebeard's ship.
The place was tense as men stared at him, all looking ready to attack him, weapons drawn as they glared at him, with some commanders by the side, men who could each level a village.
But Lucian only had eyes for the man in the center. Edward Newgate. Whitebeard.
The man was a titan, his body scarred by a thousand battles, hooked up to medical equipment. His eyes were sharp as he locked onto Lucian.
"Well, I'll be..." Lucian whispered, a grin spreading across his face.
"So," Lucian said, his voice carrying clearly over the sound of the waves. "Which one of you fine gentlemen called for a miracle?"
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