Pandemonium (1)
Pandemonium.
The beating heart of the 600-series depths, and the sovereign stronghold for countless Demon Lords across the multiverse.
Arriving here, a few things caught me completely off guard. First, the city boasted an excessively sleek, near-futuristic cityscape; second, it was astronomically larger than I had ever imagined—so vast it completely outstripped my cognitive faculties.
"...Where the hell am I?"
About an hour had passed since disembarking from Noah's Ark and stepping into the metropolis. I had sprinted flat out the entire time, yet there was still no sign of the colossal dome where the Pandemonium Assembly was supposedly taking place. From the deck of the Ark, it had looked so close.
Did the sheer size of the Ark ruin my sense of perspective?
Thinking back, too many things didn't add up. Even if my depth perception had been warped, running at full throttle for an hour should have gotten me there. I had covered at least a thousand kilometers; failing to reach it made no sense.
"Haaa..."
Letting out a weary sigh, I took in my surroundings, only to be greeted by an utterly gruesome spectacle. Chunks of mangled flesh and dark pools of blood littered the wide avenues. To put it mildly, it looked like a set straight out of a slasher flick or an apocalyptic horror film. An ordinary person would have screamed, retched, or succumbed to sheer terror at the sight, but I felt nothing. Pure familiarity had numbed me to it.
Just how many times did they clash here?
The very first sights that had welcomed me to this city were pulverized skyscrapers and blood-soaked boulevards. While initially bewildered, recalling posts from the Demon Lord Gallery helped me quickly deduce that these were merely the aftermath of brawls between Demon Lords, allowing me to keep my cool. After passing identical ruins dozens—no, hundreds—of times, the gore had simply become background noise. Spectating countless arena deathmatches on the forum had certainly helped desensitize me as well.
Still, one question lingered in the back of my mind.
Just how many Demon Lords had engaged in free-for-alls before the assembly even convened to leave this much carnage behind? Along the way, I had passed titanic blast craters, skyscrapers cleanly cleaved in two by colossal blades, and yawning chasms torn straight through the bedrock. The sheer scale defied all common sense.
Setting that aside, though...
How in the world was I supposed to reach that dome? Some sort of spatial magic or dimensional barrier had to be in play, making simple running useless. Whenever I scaled an adjacent building and looked across the skyline, the dome seemed right under my nose. Yet no matter how fast or far I ran, the distance never closed.
Something was clearly warping this city, but scouring the area with my energy senses and abilities yielded nothing unusual, leaving me thoroughly exasperated. I wanted to ask the Demon Lord Gallery for directions, but for some reason, the forum window refused to open.
As I caught my breath and wracked my brain for a solution, a sudden presence made me spin on my heel.
"Huh?"
What entered my sight was a machine. To be specific, an android clad in sleek, metallic plating, looking like something straight out of a high-budget sci-fi blockbuster. Appearing from who-knows-where, a crew of them marched over to a blood-spattered intersection and diligently began sweeping and mopping. After staring blankly for a second, I realized they might just be my ticket out of this mess. I dashed over to them.
"Excuse me—"
"Civil Service Android Unit 621, affiliated with Pandemonium Marbas Inc. How may I assist you?"
"I have a few questions about navigating Pandemonium."
"Are you a visiting Demon Lord?"
The android answered far more courteously than I had anticipated—though I suppose customer service was hardcoded into their programming.
"Yes, I am. Could you tell me which way leads to the Pandemonium Main Assembly Hall—"
"Guidance request for the Pandemonium Main Assembly Hall: received. Unit 669 will serve as your escort. Please follow the designated guide."
The moment the transmission finished, another android detached from the cleanup crew. Without looking back, it sprinted down the street, and I hurried after it.
We darted through back alleys and plunged into an underground transit tunnel, running for what felt like an eternity. Just as I was beginning to wonder how deep beneath the earth we were heading, the machine vaulted back up to the surface. Following in its wake, I finally laid eyes on the structure I had spent the last hour chasing.
A black dome engulfed my entire field of vision.
Even beneath Pandemonium's blazing sun, the assembly building remained an absolute, light-devouring void—as if someone had anchored an actual black hole to the surface of the world.
"Finally made it."
The entrances to the Main Assembly Hall were utterly bizarre. They ranged from ordinary two-meter doors built for humanoids to towering portals dozens of meters high, capped off by titanic archways soaring hundreds of meters into the air—taller than most modern skyscrapers.
Are they partitioned by race?
Thinking back to the non-human Demon Lords I had seen in the gallery arena—dragon-like sovereigns, giant-kin, and primordial cosmic entities—having portals of wildly different dimensions made total sense. The only real mystery was what sort of Demon Lord needed a doorway hundreds of meters tall. Did some of them look like literal space kaiju?
Musing on the thought, I pushed open the human-sized door and stepped inside.
Instantly, a sensation of being pulled into a vortex washed over me. Vertigo struck without warning, and the world twisted violently out of focus.
When the dizziness cleared, what greeted my senses was an overwhelming, catastrophic cacophony.
"Hey, you son of a bitch, do you really think that makes any sense?!"
"Order! Order in the hall!!"
"If you're gonna keep interrupting every word I say, let's step outside and throw down right now!"
"Everyone from the 800th class and below, shut your damn traps already!"
"Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman, please!!"
An apocalyptic din tore at my eardrums.
The deafening roar snapped me out of my daze in an instant. Snapping my head around, I took in the scene.
Spread out before me was a colossal colosseum-style amphitheater—strikingly similar to the arena opened under moderator authority—with tiered seating rising in concentric rings. Thousands of seats were arranged across each level, intended for the Demon Lords convening for the Pandemonium Assembly. The seats should have been packed to the brim with dignified rulers.
Reality, however, told a very different story.
Barely half the seats were occupied by Demon Lords sitting peacefully. The rest had abandoned decorum entirely, brawling in the aisles.
Yes, you read that right. A royal rumble. A wild, bloody, chaotic brawl that could not have been more out of place in a legislative hall.
"Hey, you punk! What generation are you?!"
"Who gives a shit about generations in the assembly hall? Might makes right, bitch! What, you want me to call you senior or something?"
BOOOM—!
"How many times do I have to say explosive magic is prohibited?! Silence!!"
"Bombs are the only medicine for meathead bastards! What are you whining about?!"
"Chairman! Chairman!! Hey, where the fuck did the Chairman go?!"
"The Chairman stepped out for a break, you dumbass!"
Flesh smacked against flesh, splattering blood and viscera across the marble aisles, punctuated by the thunder of detonating spells.
This was the Pandemonium Main Assembly Hall—and I had just dropped straight into the dead center of it.
"Haha..."
I'm gonna lose my mind.
While a gory melee raged inside the Main Assembly Hall and frantic voices clamored for the Chairman to restore order, the very 'Chairman' they were looking for was leisurely enjoying a break of his own.
Though calling it a break was a stretch; it was closer to overtime work.
"Tsk."
The Chairman of Pandemonium and Chief Manager (Judak) of the Demon Lord Gallery.
The Demon Lord known on the forum as 'Ban-gal-juk' was currently browsing the gallery.
Of course, it was less casual surfing and more administrative triage. As proof, dozens of holographic windows hovered before his eyes rather than just one or two. Private inboxes, emails packed with encrypted video attachments, the front page of the Hero Gallery, group chats with various VIPs... He swiped through dozens of floating screens before his hand finally stopped over a direct message and the Demon Lord Gallery's front page.
"So that's why Mephisto pinged me out of nowhere."
The window Ban-gal-juk selected was the Demon Lord Gallery's Recommended Posts board.
Normally, the front page would be filled with various controversies, debate bait, pointless shitposts, or random slander. Today, however, it wore an entirely different complexion.
Vicious hate posts directed at Pandemonium Demon Lords and residents flooded the board.
Seeing page after page drowned in pure vitriol, one had to wonder what the Hell faction users had been doing with all this coordinated firepower until now. The hatred was spiraling completely out of control, fueled in no small part by the complete absence of Sub-Managers (Padaks) to rein them in. Even neutral Hell-based users or moderate commenters attempting to defuse the situation were instantly buried beneath the relentless deluge of spam.
Public sentiment had ruptured past any semblance of moderation, plunging into unhinged madness.
It had deteriorated to the point where self-deprecating doomer posts began making the front page.
The Pandemonium bastards spend all day recycling brain-dead memes and mindless gallery shitposting.
The Hell bastards are drunk on elitism, doing nothing but faction-baiting and posting hate threads.
One side is just brainless copy-paste spammers,
the other side is purebred instigators and trolls.
This entire forum is fundamentally doomed.
Judak, just shut the gallery down after this assembly.
Honestly, both sides deserve to be purged by Heaven and the Heroes.
It wouldn't have been surprising if the entire board imploded on the spot. Right now, it was contained to this level only because the Hell faction held the field uncontested. If the assembly ended and Pandemonium users flooded back to find this wasteland, a catastrophic flame war was inevitable.
Immediate censorship and a total Tiananmen-style lockdown were desperately needed—
"Entertaining."
Yet Chief Manager Ban-gal-juk made no move to quell it.
Aside from purging a few illegal gore images, raid posts, and ad spam, he didn't touch a single thread on the Recommended Board. He simply watched the embers burn.
A few minutes drifted by.
One of the countless windows floating before Ban-gal-juk flashed and expanded into view.
> You're planning to redirect the gallery's firepower elsewhere, aren't you?
A single, concise sentence. Yet it was the exact message Ban-gal-juk had been waiting for.
True to his anticipation, his reply was instantaneous.
> Yeah. It caught fire at the exact right moment before the Grand Plan. If this was your doing, thanks.
> I just delegated some moderator permissions to you. Agitate the board appropriately and get them ready.
Just two brief lines.
Yet to Ban-gal-juk, this exchange was the opening flare for a scheme vaster and more intricate than anything before it.
An ancient design tracing back to the dawn of time.
A plan to recalibrate the twisted equilibrium of the universe.
A machination forged by grinding down countless lives and resources.
At Ban-gal-juk's fingertips, a narrative worthy of the Grand Plan was quietly beginning to unfold.