Arpious of the Planes

"*sigh*... It's fine. It's just I'm a bit suspicious of everybody as there is a traitor that is proficient with demons- wait, demons… Demons… Paimon,"

I chuckled to myself after pretty much confirming who the traitor was. It could only be Paimon.

Nobody in our kingdom was even aware of the world outside the mountain and that includes Arpious. And even though she seems to be very demonic, there's no way she would be the traitor of her own kingdom.

So the traitor must be aware of the outside world. A world with demons. And they must have tons of knowledge… leaving only Paimon, one of the kings of hell.

"Yin, before you tell me what you are here for, secretly inform Arpious that Paimon is the traitor. Make sure nobody else hears you," I order before glancing back at the sizable azure demon made of mist that was currently fighting against Homura.

"As you wish… B-but Mistress Arpious wanted me to inform you of something first," Yin says.

"What?"

"She said that she wanted you to use these," Yin replies while four figures rose from her shadow menacingly.

Oh, I heard Arpious fused some of her maids with the materials dropped by the mountain guardians… And these must be the results.

The deer guardian, the wolf guardian, the phoenix guardian, and the dragon guardian. They seem pretty strong and I'm assuming they're as strong as Yin or maybe even stronger.

"Okay, go, quickly," I shoo off Yin who immediately sunk into the shadows below her.

"We greet Mistress Treyni," All of the half guardians, half monsters greet while kneeling on one knee towards me.

"Do you have names?" I ask, but once they told me their names, I realized how long they were and decided to just call them what mountain guardian they fused with.

…

(Kumo POV)

"What the hell," I mutter after feeling a chill get sent straight down my spine and it seems like I wasn't the only one who felt it.

Hades, the monster army, and even the human army froze up for a quick second before continuing their onslaught.

We were currently winning by a landslide due to Aika's undead combined with Hades' undead forces that are practically on par with his mothers.

Glancing to the right, I saw a large azure cloud of mist that took the form of a demon with six arms, that held a massive scythe similar to Arpious.

Homura was cornered by the demon and she was doing everything in her power to hold the demon back as it sliced at her with attacks that almost looked as if it tore through space and time itself.

Each swing caused a gust of wind that blew houses into smithereens and sent humans flying into the air, killing them upon landing.

"I should help," I mutter but suddenly felt a warm feeling come above me and an orange tinge enveloped me and the army beside me.

I cocked my head back and my pupils dilated in surprise after seeing 2 large molten rocks, about a quarter of the kingdom's size plummet towards me.

"Auntie! What is that?! W-what should we do?!" Hades' questions but even if he asks me, there's nothing else to do besides break it and hope the split pieces fall outside the kingdom.

Also, it seems nobody on the monster side besides myself knows what that is. I heard about it in the stories my colony passed on… meteors.

Large rocks, coming from the sky can start the beginning of the apocalypse. I heard that if they collide with the ground, it'll split it in half and cause waves of lava to erupt from the ground, coating the earth in a fiery burn.

Monsters would crawl out of the widespread ravines, finishing off anybody that managed to survive. But, it wouldn't be a painless, quick, head chop. They were supposed to torture you until your mind breaks, only finishing you off until you regain the slightest bit of consciousness, allowing you to feel fear one last time.

"Fooooo… No hesitation," I mutter with my eyes growing colder by the second.

Once the meteors got into jumping range, I would inject thousands of my crawler legs, exploding them from the inside out.

The closer the two meteors approached the kingdom, the more sunlight they would block out, causing the war in between buildings to slow down.

Even some parts of the war were an "every man for themselves" type of situation as nobody could distinguish who was an enemy and who was an ally.

Closer… Just a bit closer… NOW!

BAM

I kicked off the ground, causing a dent to appear on the roof below me.

My body tore through the wind and I could feel myself already slowing down so I stretched my hand towards the first meteor and placed my hand on its molten surface.

When I reached it, it was like a whole new environment. I could even see a few monsters roaming the lava-filled and rocky land.

As soon as my palm came in contact with the blazing hot surface, I could feel a wave of pain shoot down my arm and settle in my belly.

The skin on my hand was burned to a crisp but I immediately made thousands of crawler legs, causing them to come out of the surface of the meteor and then bury upon fully forming.

Once I began to fall, my mana was almost completely drained so I panicked as I didn't have enough mana to break the other meteor.

BAM

I crashed back to the ground, in the middle of the front lines, and stared up with the surrounding soldiers.

Humans. Monsters. It didn't matter as we all stopped the war for a split second and spectated the seemingly once in a life time spectacle that began to unfold like a flower in spring.

The meteor itself was the bud and when it split apart like a blooming flower, it revealed the molten core that began to drip down onto the kingdom like sweet nectar running down a humming bird's beak.

"Don't get distracted!" One of the humans shout after snapping out of the semi-trance we were all captured by.

This resumed the bloody war and as shrapnel from the meteor rained down on us, casualties doubled and injured men tripled.

"Hmmmmm… You are quite the interesting specimen," A man's voice comes from behind me, and when I snapped my neck back, I saw a very slim and lanky man.

His thin stature was almost unnatural as his cheeks were collapsing and his eyes had deep dark eye bags, making him look as if he hadn't slept in weeks.

Despite his ragged and wrinkly body, his clothes were quite nice. A white suit with a few badges pinned to the chest and a few sashes run across his torso.

"So were you the one who summoned those meteors?" I ask calmly after jumping onto the roof of a building beside me and coating it with thin webs, invisible to the eye.

The man follows after but before he landed, the webs burst into flames, disintegrating them into ash, allowing him to land in front of me safely.

"I was indeed not the one who summoned those meteors. The who did is already dead, but that doesn't mean that second meteor isn't going to do nothing," The man explains as I glance back up at the second meteor.

It was far behind the first meteor but it was quickly picking up speed and the large chunks of the previous meteor were destroying every part of the kingdom.

"So you weren't planning on saving this kingdom huh?"

"Of course not. This was just a temporary base," The man replies with a wide smile.

"*sigh*... Well, I guess I'll have to rely on the others to try and take care of it," I mutter to myself while glancing back down to the man who quickly approached me.

He took out a normal gray sword that smashed into pieces with just my fist, but suddenly, I felt a few pricks on my stomach.

The man then jumped back, putting space between us once again.

This smell… Poison…

"What an idiot. Did you even do your research?" I ask the man while plucking the few needles that were shoved deep into my abdomen.

The lanky man clicked his tongue in disappointment after seeing me not fall victim to what I assumed to be a very strong poison due to its rancid and sickening smell that coated the inside of my nostrils and penetrated deep into my sinuses.

Suddenly, three glints could be seen, quickly approaching my eyes so I ducked, but was met with four more needles that were shoved straight into my face.

They all missed my eyes but I soon figured out that it was unintentional as my left arm went limp.

My immediate reaction was to create more space between us, but when I went to take a few steps back, my legs gave in, causing me to fall to the ground.