Damage Claim Against Heaven
“?!!”
“Pullo went flying from a single hit….”
The angels nearby stared in shock as Throne Angel Pullo was sent hurtling away by Do-ha’s attack.
Pullo was a combat-type angel.
Of Heaven’s forces, roughly seventy percent were divided between support types and logistics types. Support-type angels stood beside combat angels in battle, healing them and occasionally mopping up whatever enemy remnants remained. Logistics-type angels moved at high speed to deliver supplies, extract the wounded, and shield the formation.
Combat-type angels did exactly what the name implied: they fought. They annihilated powerful enemies and kept pushing from the front lines so the rest of the host could advance. Because of that, a combat-type angel was anywhere from several times to dozens of times stronger than the others.
The Pullo who had just gone flying was one of them.
And a human had knocked him away with a single blow.
“Tsk tsk. Look at this pathetic display.”
As the angels murmured among themselves, Do-ha let out a sigh. They had coasted on the name “angel” alone, never leaving Heaven, and this was the result.
In the distant past, angels were said to have possessed truly overwhelming power. Look at them now. A combat-type angel had been sent flying by a single strike of his.
“When I invaded the Demon Realm, Heaven didn’t so much as twitch….”
He could guess how long it had been since any of them had seen real combat. That was also why the angels crowding this place failed to recognize him. They had never left Heaven to throw themselves into actual battle. When he had fought the demons, these ones had never come out of Heaven to aid him. So of course this was their first meeting — of course they had no idea who he was.
“Pu… Pullo’s dead!”
“A combat-type angel, killed in one hit…!!”
“I didn’t kill him, you idiots.”
Do-ha snapped at the panicking angels. Pullo had simply gone flying and been knocked unconscious. He could have killed him if he wanted — but thinning Heaven’s forces would only swell the Demon Realm’s ranks, so he had settled for knocking him out.
“Come to think of it, even if Heaven’s forces stayed at full strength, they’d still get wiped out in a real fight.”
Looking at the state of Heaven, it seemed the angels would be annihilated even if they outnumbered the demons several dozen to one. The Demon Realm was a world of survival of the fittest. The weak were culled; the strong rose. Even ordinary demons were strong because of it, and noble-class demons were far stronger still. The angels, by comparison, only made him sigh.
“Make way.”
At the voice from behind the angelic ranks, the troops parted left and right once more.
“I’ll face you this time. Don’t think I’m anything like Pullo.”
Unlike the flamboyant Pullo, a plain-looking angel strode forward. Do-ha’s brow furrowed at the sight.
“Do these people think I came here for a tournament…? I said bring me Metatron.”
A blade whispered free of its sheath.
“Even meeting me is more than you deserve.”
Throne Angel Trodera fixed Do-ha with a hard stare.
“Ha… now I’m getting annoyed.”
Do-ha’s head dropped. This wasn’t working. He had tried to keep things as civil as possible, and they refused to cooperate.
“If I kill half your forces, you’ll crawl out on your own.”
Slowly, the head that had been hanging low began to rise.
“?!!”
Trodera stumbled backward without meaning to. The moment the human lifted his head, killing intent poured from his eyes.
No… I felt death.
It wasn’t that he was radiating murderous aura, and he hadn’t even twisted his face. He had simply raised his head — slowly — and Trodera had felt death.
“I… I’ll summon him.”
Trodera switched tactics at once. His instincts were screaming. If this continued, every angel here was going to die.
“Too late.”
A deep, resonant hum rolled out. An immense force erupted from Do-ha, and the whole of Heaven began to shake.
In that instant —
Four angels came streaking down from the distant sky at tremendous speed.
“Bae… Baek Do-ha?!”
“Why is the Absolute Being here….”
“I felt the energy and came, and it really is Baek Do-ha. So he was alive??”
“Hey — stop!”
The ones who represented Heaven and guarded Metatron. The Four Great Angels — Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel — cried out in urgent voices.
“Don’t worry. I’ll only kill half.”
Power gathered.
Baek-bo Myeol-hwang Gong — First Step: Cheon-roe.
“Bl… block it!”
“Damn it!”
Light flared.
A cataclysmic roar of thunder split the air. Sensing Do-ha’s power, the four angels thrust out their arms as one and began shielding the entire host.
Hundreds of building-sized bolts of lightning came crashing down from the sky.
Uriel, who had been protecting the troops, coughed up blood and dropped to one knee. His whole body was a wreck from blocking a single attack.
“This is insane….”
Michael’s brow knotted. His own legs had started to tremble. He was forcing himself to hold on, but if Baek Do-ha struck one more time, he had no confidence he could stop it.
“You managed to block that?”
Do-ha gave a short laugh as he looked at the four angels. As expected of Cherubim — second-sphere angels. In the middle realm, people still knew Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel as Archangels, but they were Cherubim now. They had been Archangels back when they were active in the middle realm long ago, and that was how people still remembered them. Their names had been handed down in the records, after all.
“Nice block.”
The four angels ground their teeth at Do-ha’s words. What “block”? Fully half the angels had been swept away.
“I was originally planning to kill about half of them, but they all just fainted. So take some pride. You stopped my power.”
Do-ha smirked at the angels. He wasn’t mocking them — he meant it. That four angels alone had managed to check his strength was genuinely worth praising. Of course, if he had been in the Life-or-Death Realm, they would all be dead.
“Just what do you think you’re doing!”
“Do you mean to wage war on Heaven?!”
The Four Great Angels, recovering their bodies at speed, shouted at Do-ha. They had done everything they could to avoid entanglement with the Absolute Being. They had never interfered with his affairs, and for as long as he had been present they had not even set foot in Belhart. So why attack Heaven out of nowhere?
“Don’t tell me… you’ve sided with the Demon Realm…?”
“Joined hands with the Demon God?!”
“These fucking pigeon bastards looking to die, spouting that garbage?”
Do-ha spat a curse at Raphael and Uriel’s words. Those morons were running their mouths? He would rather bite his own tongue off and die than join hands with the Demon God.
“For that nonsense, I think a few wings need cutting.”
“D… don’t come any closer!”
As Do-ha took a step, the Four Great Angels scrambled backward.
Then the power that had been flooding the area began to be pushed back.
“Finally crawling out, are we?”
Do-ha looked up at the sky. There, radiating white light, stood Metatron. In all of Heaven, only two beings could shove his power aside like that: the Heavenly God, and Metatron.
Metatron descended slowly and fixed Baek Do-ha with a steady gaze. The last time they had seen each other had been decades ago.
“Baek Do-ha.”
“It’s been a while.”
“‘It’s been a while’? When getting a look at your face is this much work….”
“Why did you do this.”
Metatron’s eyes turned cold. Absolute Being or not, if someone launched a preemptive strike like this, he could not simply stand by.
“I asked them to call you, and they decided not to cooperate.”
“……You attacked Heaven just to summon me? Have you truly lost your mind.”
Metatron’s brow furrowed at Do-ha’s words. He had known the Absolute Being was a madman, but this exceeded even his imagination. Did the man think an assault counted as knocking on the door?
“Speak. Why did you attack us. Don’t tell me this is some tantrum because we didn’t help you against the Demon God?”
“Who do you take for a petty thug.”
Do-ha let out a hollow laugh at Metatron’s words. He had never expected the angels to help in the first place. The thought itself had never crossed his mind.
“If not that, then why the attack. The angels never struck at you, and they never harmed the middle realm.”
“Both of those are true, actually.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“That an angel attacked me, and that one harmed the middle realm. Both are correct.”
“……Nonsense.”
Metatron shook his head. That was impossible. No angel had descended to the middle realm at present. He managed that rigorously; he would know.
“You don’t really think I’d pull this just to pick a fight.”
Do-ha opened a subspace. Something dropped to the ground with a dull thud.
“….”
“I knew you’d recognize it.”
The object that had fallen from the subspace was Silchemis’s severed head. After killing him, Do-ha had borrowed Canteas’s power to restore the skin and facial structure as much as possible. Melted and torn as it had been, the features had been nearly unrecognizable — but thanks to Canteas’s remarkable skill, it now looked close to how Silchemis had appeared in life.
“Why do you think I’m carrying this bastard’s head around?”
“….”
“He created mutant wyverns and unleashed them on the middle realm. A lot of people nearly died because of it. Still look like it’s none of your business?”
“Silchemis was already banished from Heaven. He has nothing to do with us—”
“You don’t actually think that line is going to work on me, do you? I happen to know about the damages claim you filed against the Martial Alliance years ago.”
Decades earlier, a former member who had left the Martial Alliance had, in the course of fighting enemies, injured an angel. The angel had come down to observe the middle realm’s situation and had simply been unlucky enough to pass nearby and get caught up in it. He hadn’t died — a wing had been slightly torn, that was all. Afterward, Metatron had demanded absurd compensation from the Martial Alliance. Even though the man had already left the Alliance, Heaven had twisted every possible argument and insisted. They had demanded roughly twenty years of the Martial Alliance’s budget, and the Alliance Leader of the time had ultimately sold everything he owned to hand it over to Heaven.
“I should have been there for that… what a shame.”
That incident had happened not long after he first crossed into the world of Belhart. If Heaven had tried that nonsense during his prime, he would almost certainly have fought them before he ever touched the Demon Realm.
“Come to think of it, Seon-gye stayed quiet back then too.”
Even if they only looked after the Kunlun Sect, shouldn’t they at least have mediated when it was a matter of the martial world? He would have to go raise hell in Seon-gye later.
“So you get to take responsibility too. Right? I came to file a claim for damages.”
Do-ha shrugged and looked at Metatron. Even if Silchemis had been banished from Heaven, hadn’t he still been a former angel? Then Heaven was responsible. “He was banished, so Heaven has nothing to do with it anymore”? What did Do-ha care about that.
“….”
Metatron bit his lip.
“This,” Do-ha said, laughing as he watched Metatron’s face harden and his eyes flick about, “is what they call karma.”