The Ancient's weapon transitioned from standby to battle-ready mode, targeted the screamer, and fired. I expected the demon to be reduced to dust and ashes, but when the plasma charge dissipated, the entire Slaughterhouse Nine emerged from the churned-up ground, all present and unharmed. Moreover, the only one who seemed to suffer any damage was Cherish, who had swallowed a mouthful of dirt and was now desperately spitting it out.

"Hmm, strange... it didn't work" - I mused.

"How dare you?!!!" - Jack Slash roared.

"How about this?"

This time, it wasn't just one weapon that fired but a dozen from the nearest segment of the wall, and the barrage continued for ten seconds. But once again, the same indestructible group emerged from a sea of boiling lava, cursing even more furiously. What puzzled me the most was that I couldn't understand how they were doing it. From the perspective of shard powers and my psionics, they were just regular hosts with ordinary shards. Only Siberian could have survived this attack, and that was only because her real body was almost a kilometer away.

"The will of Shub-Niggurath protects me and my slaves!" - the demon proclaimed triumphantly. - "And this proves you lie! Kneel before me at once!"

"I don't know from which dumpster you crawled out of, but you can stand there and shout all you want. We have enough clowns in this city" - I replied, turning my back and deliberately leaving the area.

If this demon could have breached the city, he would have done so long ago without asking for my permission. I didn't know what power was protecting him, but it had nothing to do with shards or the game.

A mad roar erupted behind me, and I could feel the surge of destructive energy even through my shield. I didn't need to turn around to see that Jack Slash had used some kind of demon magic based on demonic energy. During my journey with Guts, I had become nearly an expert at assessing an opponent's strength by the fluctuations of their demonic energy. As for this demon, I could say that he wasn't very powerful. He was on par with the creatures Guts would cut to pieces in the 'feasting hall'. However, there was something about his energy that made it... more prioritized, I suppose. That is, when the demon's magic clashed with the laws of physics, it turned out that many of those laws were optional.

Fortunately for me, the Ancient's shield operated on phenomena that formed the very essence of the physical world. This was the very modification of the shield developed by a brilliant Ancient trying to find protection against the most destructive weapons of the Ancients stolen by the Wraiths. Perhaps even magic and psionics couldn't achieve better results. This shield wasn't absolute, but breaking through it required more than just brute force.

I didn't linger and left the demon raging in front of the wall, venting his anger on the inhabitants of the outer world. The city had been in a state of siege for a long time, and the citizens were only allowed go outside for very serious reasons. For them to be let back in after that, something extraordinary had to happen.

The demon raged for nearly an hour before calming down and disappearing beyond the horizon. I tasked the replicators with analyzing the reasons for the weapons' ineffectiveness, but I wasn't particularly worried for the time being.

I had almost forgotten about this incident when a couple of weeks later, an army of demons led by Jack Slash appeared outside the city walls. They yelled, cursed me and all the city's inhabitants, and expressed their disagreement with the cosmic order in various ways. But as soon as their first blow touched the force field, my guns opened fire, incinerating the entire 'invincible army' in just ten seconds. Once again, the only survivors were the members of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

This time, the level of insanity in the demon's voice reached unprecedented heights. From his incoherent shouts, I gathered that he had assembled a great army of demons, nearly defeated all the angels, and now, just as he was about to capture Brockton Bay and protect it, I had destroyed all these pathetic capes, disturbing Jack's genius plans. I could only laugh at the stupidity of this fool and go to rest. The city could sleep peacefully.

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Alas, I was mistaken. Somehow, Jack Slash managed to contact Noelle and persuade her... to sabotage us. Not to help him capture the city, but simply to screw me and Shub-Niggurath over. This traitorous bitch, who had sworn loyalty and devotion to me, used Panacea's power to create a bacterium that rapidly infected all the residents of Brockton Bay. Not everyone was infected, but enough to effectively depopulate the city. After all, the people are the city.

At first, I tasked the replicators with solving this problem, but they predicted within five seconds that the disease was incurable. Noelle had twisted things so that the bacteria behaved like viruses, embedding themselves in human DNA and literally cutting out parts of the genome, replacing them with their own sequences. In short, while the people in the city were still alive and almost healthy, they had at most a day to live.

Realizing the situation, I decided it was time for my 'Plan C'. But first, I ordered the replicators to capture all the demons in the city, without distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent. After that, a public execution took place, during which I devoured the souls of the traitors. Before the sentence was carried out, Noelle 'suddenly' repented and began to beg for mercy, but she faced the most agonizing death I could devise. Moreover, I completely erased all information about her past lives, so after her soul was consumed, nothing of her remained.

With vengeance dealt with, I turned to the pressing issue. I needed to save the lives of all the city's residents. Or not their lives, but at least the connection between their bodies and souls. I had never practiced classical necromancy, but I was an expert in 'alternative necromancy'. In the center of the city stood an obelisk, ready but unpowered for a long time. I activated it in forced mode, and people began to transform into necromorphs before my eyes. Although this technology was meant to combine all astral bodies into a single mass and gather all souls in the obelisk, I modified it so that people's souls remained in the necromorphs they became.

The only problem I couldn't solve was maintaining the integrity of people's consciousness. As they transformed into necromorphs physically, they also transformed mentally. In other words, the city's inhabitants became mindless zombies, eager to kill and devour anything alive. But since there was nothing alive left in the city anyway, I didn't consider this as a major issue.

But turning people into necromorphs wasn't the only change. A few hours later, when the transformation process was complete, the entire city, resembling a massive sphere surrounded by a force field, soared into the sky and headed into deep space.

Now I could be at ease about the city's 'preservation'. The residents were already immortal, and the city was beyond the reach of any capes. But there was still the matter of revenge on Jack Slash, or rather the demon possessing him. I couldn't harm him directly, but nothing stopped me from paying him back in kind, doing a little 'sabotage'. So, in the 'crater' left after the city's departure, I left a bomb of the Ancients set to detonate in a couple of hours.

At the moment of the explosion, I was 'on the far side of the Sun', so I could only see the flash reflected in other planets. And from the fact that half of the Sun's surface suddenly heated from five thousand degrees to three million. In short, the Earth wasn't just blown up; it was vaporized and scattered across space, leaving no trace. Moreover, the explosion's characteristics were such that it guaranteed the destruction of all 'cosmic worm' shards. Flying through the area where the planet used to be, I confirmed that none of the demons or angels survived the explosion.

Three days later, my city-garden was flying through the vastness of space in orbit around the Sun. Its perfectly clean streets shone with otherworldly beauty. Necromorphs wandered around, searching for signs of life. And over this idyllic scene, the sweet song from the Dead Space soundtrack played, reproduced by me from memory.

I was the only truly living resident of the city, embodying the statement 'the city lived, the city lives, the city will live'. The replicators watched over the city's inhabitants and repaired any damage they might accidentally cause. There was no malice in the necromorphs' actions because intent as such was absent from their minds.

Here it is - the perfect city with perfect residents!

I was standing in the central tower of the city, observing the surroundings when I felt the presence of a demon nearby. It was Shub-Niggurath. But he seemed different. When I interacted with him in Lang, he appeared as just a strong demon. But now, waves of power radiated from him, and reality itself seemed to try to bend to match his desires. This was a god, truly with capital letters. A dark god capable of destroying universes with a mere thought. Next to him, I was just a trivial insect.

"So, what do you have here?" - the demon asked. I had to muster all my willpower not to kneel but to respond as I had when I spoke to him in Lang.