Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

About ten thousand years ago, the world effect of this world was not so complete, and an unknown low-level demon accidentally came to this world through a Gate of the Abyss.

Such a new world was born every day in the Infinite Worlds, so discovering a new world was actually nothing much.

But as more and more demons intruded into this world, this place began to become chaotic.

There were many worlds with Purgatory Spaces, but it was quite rare for one to have such a large Purgatory Space. After many demons entered this place, they treated it as a new territory, established lairs to live here, and fought one another over territory and hunting grounds, making this place chaotic.

The frequent travel of the demons between the Abyss and the Purgatory Space here quickly attracted the attention of the angels, so they began to descend to this world to continue the Eternal War with the demons.

Heaven was perpetual, and angels were unceasing; the Abyss was endless, and demons were unending. This was the so-called Eternal War.

Both sides regarded this newly discovered world as a new battlefield and began to fight back and forth. This time was about nine thousand years ago.

Sparda came to this world. At that time, he was not a demon lord but a relatively powerful high-rank insect-type demon. After coming to this world, he not only fought against angels but also against his fellow demons because of the chaos in the Demon World.

Until one day, Sparda encountered… an extremely ugly but strange demon!

At that time, this strange demon was standing beside an angel that he had just killed. But what was peculiar was that he did not devour the angel’s soul and tear the angel’s body apart like other demons. Instead, this demon guarded the angel’s corpse and rubbed and licked it intoxicatedly.

Angels with pure bloodlines would turn into light and disappear after death, but artificial angels would leave behind flesh and blood bodies. This angel in front of him was an artificial angel.

Sparda felt that this was very weird at that time, so he hid to the side and watched. Not long later, he found that this strange and ugly demon actually tore off the angel’s wings, placed these two white wings on his back, and then began to skin the angel! He seemed to want to wear the angel’s skin on himself.

Sparda was extremely puzzled. He could not understand the demon’s actions, so he could not help but stand out and ask.

But unexpectedly, this demon seemed to have flown into a rage out of humiliation and attacked Sparda. After fighting, Sparda realized that this strange demon was actually very powerful and already at the demon lord level. Sparda was not this demon’s opponent at all and was defeated.

But after defeating him, this demon did not kill him but let him go. But the condition was that Sparda had to obey him.

Submitting to the strong was normal for demons, so Sparda did not think too much about it at that time and followed behind this demon.

Needless to say, this strange demon was naturally Mundus. After subduing Sparda, Mundus began to fight in the Demon World with Sparda in an attempt to unify the demons of the entire Demon World and fight against the angels.

During the war, Mundus would only appear when opponents of the same level showed up. Otherwise, he would leave them to Sparda to handle. Mundus hid behind the scenes most of the time and rarely appeared in front of his demon subordinates.

After following Mundus for a long time, Sparda realized that Mundus seemed to have a pathological obsession with the appearance of angels. He hated his original demon form very much. After all, if Sparda’s aesthetic sense considered Mundus ugly, then in the eyes of other demons, Mundus looked hideous.

Since even demons found him hideous, it was obvious how strange Mundus’s demon form was. It could be said that Mundus was a bizarre species among demons at that time… So Sparda could understand Mundus’s mentality of wanting to hide his appearance. Although he felt that it was weird for this guy to want to turn himself into an angel, who let Mundus be so strong. For demons, strength could cover all ugliness. As long as the boss was strong enough, Sparda did not care about any special hobbies.

During those years, although the humans of this world had already been born, they were still living in a state of eating raw meat and drinking blood, and demons did not take them seriously at all. For demons, human souls at that time were no different from animal spirits and could only be used as supplementary food. The main opponents of demons in this world were still angels.

During the thousands of years of continuous battles, Sparda became stronger and stronger. He eventually surpassed the limitations of high-rank demons, completed the promotion ritual, and became a demon lord. In contrast, Mundus progressed slowly. Although he was also becoming more powerful, as time passed, the gap between them was shrinking.

With Sparda’s help, Mundus defeated the other demon lords of the Demon World and unified the entire Demon World. But because Mundus had been hiding behind the scenes most of the time, the reputation of the demon swordsman Sparda gradually began to surpass that of Mundus.

Sparda did not feel that anything was wrong. He still regarded himself as Mundus’s subordinate and fought for him, but Mundus became increasingly anxious.

Because… Mundus’s path to becoming a demon king was exceptionally rough.

All demon lords wanted to become demon kings, but the difficulty of demon lords promoting to demon kings was hundreds of times more difficult than high-rank demons promoting to demon lords. After thousands of years, Mundus had unified the Demon World, but he still had very little hope of becoming a demon king.

Then one day, Mundus suddenly disappeared.

No one knew where he went. About ten years later, Mundus returned. The time he disappeared for was not too long for demons, so Sparda and his other subordinates did not find it strange. At that time, the war between the demons and angels was still ongoing, and Mundus’s demon army was still operating according to inertia, without any accidents.

However, from the day Mundus returned, he gradually became stronger and stronger.

As time passed, Mundus’s magic power experienced a tremendous leap, far exceeding that of demon lords like Sparda and the others, and his soul also began to change qualitatively.

Demon lords were known as demigods, and their greatest symbol was that their bodies were immortal. As for demon kings, they would go one step further and become immortal souls, becoming truly immortal and indestructible. Mundus was transforming into this form at that time.

It could be said that once Mundus obtained the power of ‘authority’, he would become a true demon king and as powerful as a god.

This was also why many demon kings were called ‘demon gods’…

The powerful strength that Mundus occasionally displayed made the demons of the Demon World rejoice, including Sparda. They hoped that Mundus could become a true demon king and lead them to attack Heaven.

The development of the situation was not unexpected for the demons. The angels were retreating in defeat, the Eternal War in this world was about to end, and the demons would win the final victory.

But at this moment, Sparda discovered something abnormal.

As Mundus’s right-hand man, Sparda had always been a top-tier general, the kind that led the most troops. In the past, Sparda often saw some familiar faces among his army. The so-called familiar faces referred to the fact that even if these demon subordinates died in battle, it would not be long before they returned from the Abyss and continued to join the war.

As long as the angels did not purify and eliminate their souls, these demons would definitely return.

But gradually, Sparda found that these familiar faces were becoming fewer and fewer.

At first, Sparda did not think too much about it, assuming that the familiar faces had been completely killed by the angels and could not return. But as time passed, he realized that something was amiss. There were too many familiar faces that had disappeared!

With doubts in his heart, Sparda naturally had to investigate what was going on. As the investigation unfolded, he discovered an astonishing situation: the Ouroboros Marks among the demons were gradually disappearing!

An Ouroboros Mark was engraved in their souls the moment they passed through a Gate of the Abyss. For millions of years, demons had already become accustomed to this, and it was instinctive, so demons would never deliberately examine the Ouroboros Mark in the depths of their souls.

As a result, the demons did not notice that the Ouroboros Mark in the depths of their souls had disappeared. It was the same for Sparda. If he had not deliberately investigated, he would not have realized that this was happening.

Without the protection of the Ouroboros Mark, it was equivalent to losing the protection of the Abyss. After demons died, their souls could not accurately return to the Abyss at all. Instead, they would fall into chaotic space at the moment of return and be utterly erased!

After discovering this situation, Sparda was naturally very surprised, so he began to investigate the reason for the disappearance of the Ouroboros Marks. In the end, he was shocked to find that the Ouroboros Marks given to demons by the Abyss did not mysteriously disappear, but it was because someone was gathering these Ouroboros Marks.

This person was naturally their boss, Mundus…

At this point, Sparda finally understood why Mundus had become so powerful in recent years. It was because he had used some special method to gather the Ouroboros Marks of millions of demons into himself alone! His so-called immortal soul was achieved by plundering the marks of other demons!

The furious Sparda left the troops he led and went to find Mundus alone to question him. However, the exposed Mundus knew that his method of plundering the marks of other demons to achieve the immortality of his soul could be said to have violated the great taboo of the Abyss. Once the matter became exposed, other demons would likely attack him. Thus, when Sparda discovered the truth, Mundus immediately began to silence him.

This time was exactly two thousand years ago. At that time, Mundus’s other subordinates had proposed attacking the human world and plundering souls. But because they had not completely defeated the angels yet, if they became distracted at this time, it was very likely to give the angels a chance to catch their breath, so Sparda rejected it.

Therefore, Mundus did not mention anything about Sparda’s questioning. Instead, he framed Sparda for standing together with humans and betraying his compatriots.

Two thousand years ago, the humans of this world were still in a slave society and were still ignorant. Sparda was crazy to stand on the side of humanity…

This excuse was full of flaws, but Mundus was the ruler of the Demon World at that time, and no one dared to refute his words. Just like that, Sparda became a traitor through his words, and Mundus sent the entire demon army of the Demon World to surround and kill Sparda…

Sparda was also fierce at that time. Facing the demon army under Mundus, not only did he not retreat, but he charged forward instead. After breaking through the demon army’s defense line, he rushed into the Demon King Palace alone and found Mundus.

Mundus’s alternative method of becoming a demon king did not allow him to truly reach the demon king level. But more importantly, Sparda possessed one of Mundus’s most critical weaknesses!

He knew Mundus’s true name…