Satisfied with the androids’ performance, I decided to teleport Tony back. Just then, Sophie showed up, leaking massive amounts of energy, so I cast a barrier around her. She seemed to have something in her hand...

Even with the barrier, the entire Realm was shaking. At least the barrier contained enough of the energy to prevent any damage to the building. The building could handle this level, but still, the amount of energy needed to shake an entire Realm is not small—and that’s through a goddamn barrier! I’m pretty sure this Realm would be falling apart along with the house if it wasn’t for my barrier containing the majority of the energy.

The object in her hand was an artifact that seemed to contain a large amount of hell energy. Did she steal it from Mephisto? That’s probably where she got it. I’m surprised he didn’t place any traps on it. That artifact contains a massive amount of Hell energy. Not sure what he was planning to use it for—probably one of his schemes. That guy’s actually on the weaker side for a Hell Lord. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s the weakest of all the Hell Lords that rule over various Hells. However, he is the most scheming, cunning piece of shit out of all of them—and that’s saying something, given that demons are notorious for being scheming dicks.

I checked the artifact, since Sophie seemed unable to respond. Ah, I guess Mephisto trapped it. Well, none of those traps will affect Sophie. Ultimate Skill users can’t be affected by lesser skills or magic. There is an exception to the rule: a Unique Skill on the verge of evolving into an Ultimate Skill. If someone were to combine an aspect of their Ultimate Skill with a lesser skill or magic, they could bypass the usual immunity.

Still, that wouldn’t work against me, since one of the effects of my Ultimate Skill renders me immune to any ability that hasn’t reached Ultimate Skill-level power. In other words, whether it’s an attack or something like mind control, as long as it’s not at the Ultimate Skill level, it has no effect on me because it’s instantly nullified. That’s just a fundamental fact.

Even using that trick to bypass immunity, it was obvious the attack didn’t do much damage to Rimuru. Most combinations of skills and spells with an aspect of your Ultimate Skill aren’t particularly powerful to begin with. Given the strength of an Ultimate Skill user, they wouldn’t be able to cause any serious, meaningful damage.

I suppose you could use it to wear them down over a long period, forcing them to use energy to regenerate. Though in Rimuru’s case, he can just consume your attacks, allowing him to replenish his energy indefinitely. The reason he doesn’t do that all the time is that the ability itself uses energy, so sometimes it’s not worth the cost of using the skill.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Anyway, I got sidetracked. The traps have no effect on Sophie, though they all activated. There even seemed to be some nasty soul traps in the artifact. It makes sense—Mephisto is a demon, so he probably knows a few tricks when it comes to soul-related magic. No one has an affinity for soul magic because it’s one of the very few magics without one. It's also the most difficult type of magic to use. Not only is even the most basic soul magic extremely hard, but you also need a monstrous level of power to wield it.

For example, before becoming a Demon Lord, when I was only at the Demon Lord Seed level, I couldn't use any soul-related magic. However, now I can easily perform it. Take, for instance, the spell Rimuru used to revive his allies. That spell simply involved a healing spell to restore the body and a spell to shove the soul back into the body and tether it there. As far as soul magic goes, that’s one of the most basic spells. But as Diablo said, it required an inhuman level of calculations to execute. Even Diablo admitted that a demon like himself could only manage to resurrect one or two people at most. A large-scale use of that spell was beyond impossible. At my current level, I can do the same as Diablo—resurrecting one or two people at a time at most. Plus, the amount of energy it consumes is terrifying. The mana consumption for that type of spell is just nasty. That’s why you need to be powerful to use soul magic—it burns through mana like no one’s business.

It seems that artifact is trying to force Sophie to absorb a massive amount of Hell energy at once, likely in an effort to corrupt her. Corrupting a demon with Hell energy is laughable. An average demon would probably go insane if they absorbed that much at once, but Sophie is a Devil Lord—the highest caliber of demon. She’s also, a to True Demon Lord, further elevating her existence level.

The power ranking system at the end, I believe, is based on the amount of energy, and I can't disagree with that. It’s relatively reliable, but it doesn’t take into account other aspects of strength. That’s the weakness of power rankings. "Existence level" refers to the complexity of one’s being; naturally stronger beings are more complex. So, it was never intended to measure how strong someone is. That’s why relying on power rankings is completely unreliable. Existence levels aren’t meant to indicate strength—they’re simply a way to demonstrate the level of existence. In that sense, they’re more reliable than power levels since they don’t try to measure someone's strength by only factoring in one aspect, like power, without considering things like skills, abilities, and tactics, which greatly affect combat.

Anyway, Sophie is absorbing all the Hell energy and seems to be converting it into divinity, assimilating it. Looks like it’s going to take a while.