Abaddon silently walked forward, with steps that melted the ground beneath his feet.
He dismissed the column of flames billowing around Satan’s body, and kneeled down to check his condition.
The body of the sin of wrath had been burned to a crisp, leaving behind a blackened carcass and a floating ethereal sphere with a red symbol in the center.
Abaddon would get to the sin in a second but for now, there was something else he desired.
Crack!
Snap!
Bit by bit, he began to break off pieces of Satan’s charred body and eat them.
The flavor was horrible and the texture was like brand new leather, but he wasn’t eating Satan because he was hungry.
He was eating him to see what he could gain.
Once all of him had been devoured, Abaddon let out a deeply held sigh.
His gains… they were better than he expected.
Eating Satan’s brain (As charred as it may have been) provided him understanding of all of Satan’s martial arts.
The instincts, techniques, and reactions that had taken him eons to acquire were now flowing seamlessly into Abaddon’s mind.
His physical strength and durability also saw a small boost, and he wondered if he could have gained more from eating Satan raw.
‘Alas, it was unavoidable.’ He thought with a sigh.
Finally, Abaddon held out his hand and absorbed the sin of wrath into his body.
A surging heat welled up from within his stomach and traveled to every fiber of his being.
He suddenly felt a small desire to run rampant and destroy everything, but as a dragon he was already used to such impulses and quickly stuffed them back down.
There was a time and place for every impulse and emotion, and Abaddon was more than adept at choosing that time and place.
But there was another thing that he was noticing about himself.
With every sin he gathered, he felt like he was accumulating more and more of some kind of negative energy, and it was seeping all the way to his very bones.
‘When I have gathered them all… what will I become…?’
He was both excited, and terrified for the future.
‘Speaking of sins… Come here, friend.’
Abaddon called for his mount, a large locust he had named Bagheera.
The beast excitedly flew towards it’s master with the queen of envy still atop it’s back, seemingly impervious to the heat Abaddon was projecting.
However, Leviathan was not nearly as fortunate and her skin had already begun to blister from Abaddon’s body temperature.
“Hey hey hey! Cool it down, would you? Just because I’m cold-blooded doesn’t mean I’m fireproof!”
Abaddon tampered down his body temperature just enough to allow Leviathan to come within a safe distance, although he was still hot enough to be called a living furnace.
Leviathan looked around at the surrounding destruction and let out a disbelieving sigh. “You really defeated my brother… and as no more than a second stage no less… what are you doing?”
Abaddon had not said a single word, and simply held out his hand as if he were waiting for her to hand him something.
“You are out of the contest. Give me your sin.”
“What!?” Leviathan’s eyes went as wide as saucers and she reflexively jerked away from Abaddon. “I may be out of the contest but you have no right to ask me for something like that! This was not apart of the terms!”
“Indeed not, but am I not owed some sort of payment after saving you?”
“Then I’ll send you a few whores and some wine but I’m not giving you my sin!”
Abaddon sighed when he realized that Leviathan truly was going to be difficult.
It was regrettable since she was his aunt, but he would have to be a bit forceful.
‘It is a good thing I still have eight minutes left…’
BOOOOMMMM!!!
A tornado of white flames erupted around the two of them, and Leviathan immediately recoiled from the overwhelming heat.
“Then if you will not give it to me, I will challenge you for it. Although I will not promise you that your fate will not be the same as your brother’s.”
“F-Fine, fine! Just stop!”
Abaddon’s flames immediately dispersed, and the air returned to a normal temperature.
Leviathan glared angrily at her nephew as she shakily brought her hand up to the space between her breasts.
Begrudgingly, she pulled out the sin of envy and her body began to change right before his eyes.
Strangely enough, she maintained her serpentine tail but now she more closely resembled a mermaid than a lamia.
What was formerly a very beautiful woman adorned in gold with the lower half of a serpent became a small child with dirty unkempt hair and wearing dirty rags.
Around her face were various dark blue fish scales, and her eyes became a radiant golden color.
“Don’t look at me like that, you bastard… even if I look like this I’m still eons older than you.” Leviathan muttered.
Abaddon said nothing and held out his hand to accept the sin of envy.
Unlike all of the other sins, this one felt a bit… icky.
Abaddon had not experienced feelings of envy ever since coming to this world, and he’d forgotten how horrible of an emotion it was.
Unconsciously, he twisted up his nose in disgust, and Leviathan did not take kindly to such an action.
“If you’re displeased with it, give it back!”
“It is not that, I was just unused to it is all.”
Abaddon stared carefully at the pouting Leviathan.
The longer he stared at her, the more he could feel this… familiarity that he couldn’t quite grasp.
“What… are you exactly?” He asked.
“Tch.”
Leviathan rolled her eyes as if she hated that question with every fiber of her being, and opened her mouth to answer when they were suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the euphrates.
Kanami had returned back to her regular appearance and was now on the verge of tears as she covered her mouth.
“God… you are alive… I had thought for sure that you… I dare not even say it.”
Not just her, but all of the Euphrates were showing some degree of emotion, either through tears or involuntary trembling.
While wiping the tears from her eyes, Kanami was approached by Abaddon and received a large hand on her head.
“I’ve made my right hand worry needlessly. I suppose that I should be scolded for such a thing.”
Kanami went from wiping her eyes of tears to wiping her nose of blood after Abaddon touched her, but she wasn’t so distracted she couldn’t recognize his words.
“N-No, of course not! I should have had more faith in… God, why is there a naked woman over there?”
Lillian had been so absorbed in watching everything that Abaddon was doing, she had yet to take the time to look at herself or her surroundings.
And as Kanami had just pointed out, she had been standing around stark naked this entire time.
“KYYAAAAA!!!! NOOO!!!”
She immediately curled up into a ball and tried to cover up all of her private bits, while praying that Abaddon hadn’t seen them.
Lucky for her, Abaddon was so preoccupied with eliminating Satan that he hadn’t actually noticed that she was naked.
Abaddon quickly flew to Lillian’s side and pulled out a cloak seemingly from thin air.
One of the first things Abaddon did while testing his sin of gluttony was eat his storage ring.
It gave him a sort of permanent pocket dimension that only he could access, and he kept just about everything in there for emergencies.
“It’s alright, Lillian. You’re okay.”
“No, I’m not I’m mortified! A-All of these people saw me naked!”
“I’ll remove the memory from their minds later, there is no need to worry.”
A chill passed through the spines of the Euphrates, but because they could tell that their god seemed to care very much for this woman, they did not complain.
Abaddon draped his cloak over the shoulders of Lillian, but instead of covering up her voluptuous body, it passed through it with no obstruction.
“What…?”
The dragon’s heart dropped to the bottom of his feet.
Lillian hadn’t actually been revived, he had just freed her spirit from the afterlife and brought her back to the land of the living.
But because she wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place, it seemed like she could not interact with physical objects.
“We.. probably should’ve expected something like this, huh?” Lillian replied half jokingly.
Even though she was trying to hide it, Abaddon could hear the faint disappointment within her voice.
“No… this is only a temporary setback. I will return to you the life that was taken from you.”
“My prince… something like that is not your responsibility.”
For the first time, Lillian’s words could not provide Abaddon comfort.
He would always feel guilty for what happened to her.
In his eyes, he was the one who condemned her to her fate by walking her down the aisle to marry that monster.
“It may not be my responsibility… but I have always wished that I could go back in time and change things… Seems to me like this is the next best option.”
𝗈𝒱xt.𝒸𝑜
Delving into his mind, Abaddon used the shared memories of every true dragon in creation and searched for a way to resurrect a dead soul.
Unsurprisingly, he was flooded with methods that ranged from creating a new body from scratch all the way to flooding a soul with an abhorrent amount of magic, and essentially recreating their flesh out of thin air.
While all of the options he found were difficult, he couldn’t care less about that right now.
All that mattered was that there were options, and he fully intended to explore every one of them thoroughly.
Holding out his hand, Abaddon called over his massive greatsword and held it out in front of Lillian.
“You should be able to wait inside of this for now. I will resurrect you fully once I have finished my business with Mammon and Lucifer.”
Lillian looked back and forth between the large sword in front of her and Abaddon before a wry smile formed on her face.
“Still determined to go so far for me… I am not sure if I should feel flattered or not.”
“You can decide while you wait in the sword.” he said playfully.
“Fufufu~ I’m going, I’m going!”
Lillian closed her eyes to concentrate before her body became a gray mist that entered the massive blade.
Almost immediately, the sword seemingly had a life of it’s own as it began to float in the air.
“How does it feel?” He asked.
Lillian wanted to say that she felt rather warm.
Since Abaddon’s sword was made from his own crystallized blood and scales, she felt as if she were back in his embrace, listening to the sound of his heartbeat.
‘What am I thinking about… I used to bathe him for crying out loud!!’
“I-It’s fine! I am very comfortable in here!”
“Well try not to get too comfortable. This is only a temporary home after all.” He reminded gently.
He reached out and gently grabbed her hilt, just as the timer on his powers ran out and his body returned to normal.
‘Another two months before I can use that power… I always did hate cooldowns.’ He thought in annoyance.
Without that power boost, killing Lucifer was going to be even more difficult than dealing with Satan.
Silently, he began to wrack his brain for a potential game plan, now that he did not have a second life to fall back on.
Just as he was thinking of a plan, he sensed multiple presences approaching his position at a frighteningly high speed.
Instinctively, he looked up into the sky as he waited patiently for his unavoidable fate.
The sound of sonic booms began to come closer and closer to his position, and a moment later he saw a very familiar giant bat flying directly towards him.
One by one, six beautiful women jumped off the back of he large creature, and dove straight for Abaddon.
“HUSBANDD!!”