"The name is Meliodas," he said with a serious look, "the future husband of Elizabeth."
At his words, Elizabeth's cheeks flushed with a soft pink, caught off guard by the sudden declaration. But the warmth in her eyes quickly faded as she glanced past him, her gaze falling upon the frozen figures behind Cocytus.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice sharpening. "And what have you done to them?"
Her eyes narrowed as she took in the sight—members of both the goddess clan and demon clan stood like statues, their complexions pale and lifeless, faint traces of ice-blue creeping across their skin.
"…Thanks to the power of the Supreme Ones, I was granted the ability to raise the dead and give them a greater purpose," Cocytus said, his tone calm but reverent. "What greater joy is there than to survive in service to the Supreme Ones?"
He meant every word, believing in the order and strength Nazarick offered. And from the way these two carried themselves, they didn't seem evil—just misguided. If he could sway them, perhaps they could become powerful assets to Nazarick's cause.
But his hope quickly dissolved as their expressions shifted. The calm curiosity in their eyes faded, replaced first by disbelief—then by a rising fury. Their gazes locked on him, not with intrigue, but with a growing storm of rage.
"I see it will not be easy to make you grasp the truth," Cocytus said, his voice heavy with cold certainty. "But when the Supreme Ones arrive, they shall conquer this world and bring an end to the foolish war between the Supreme Goddess and the Demon King. As undead, you two would come to understand."
With those final words, he stepped forward—and the frozen earth responded. The ice that blanketed the ground shimmered, then surged to life, twisting and lashing out like a tide of living blades under Cocytus's command.
Meliodas and Elizabeth sprang into action, their forms blurring as they weaved through the assault, dodging jagged spears of enchanted ice while streaking toward Cocytus with unmatched speed.
Elizabeth moved first, channeling her divine energy into a swirling spiral of light. A radiant drill of holy power burst forth, tearing through the air toward Cocytus.
But Cocytus met the attack with a single, precise slash. With ease, his blade cut through the divine magic, splitting the spiral in half. The slash didn't stop—it surged forward, now racing straight toward Elizabeth. Her eyes widened as the edge neared, but she twisted midair, narrowly avoiding the strike at the last possible second.
'Not all of his attacks ignore distance,' Elizabeth realized, leaping aside as a holy beam tore through the air—narrowly missing her, but vaporizing the space where she'd been. Her expression twisted in pain as she saw her kin, the members of the goddess clan, mindlessly attacking even in death.
Meanwhile, Meliodas was rapidly analyzing the battle. 'He hasn't used magic at all so far… He's slower than I, and his raw power isn't even close to mine. But his technique…' Meliodas narrowed his eyes, already lunging forward to close the gap. 'His mastery over weapons is allowing him to bridge that gap completely…'
His blade swept in with deadly force. Cocytus met the blow head-on, steel crashing against steel in a brilliant flash. The ground cracked beneath them from the sheer force of the impact, but neither warrior gave an inch.
'His attack cuts through space… but it seems like he can't do that back-to-back. Or maybe he can't while defending,' Meliodas thought, as he exchanged another flurry of blows with Cocytus.
He was right. Cocytus couldn't afford to take a single direct hit—not from someone of Meliodas' caliber—so every ounce of his focus was poured into cutting the force behind Meliodas' strikes. That precision, that razor-thin timing, was how he managed to block attacks from someone vastly stronger than himself. He wasn't overpowering Meliodas… he was dismantling the impact before it landed.
And the reason Cocytus could even react in time to such devastating speed? Simple. The state he had entered—Supreme Weapon Master Mode—had lifted his natural limitations. His instincts and movements now operated at a level far beyond his usual capabilities. It wasn't raw speed that let him keep up with Meliodas… it was the sheer refinement of a being who had lived for nothing but the blade.
So, they clashed—a brutal two-on-one. At first, Meliodas and Elizabeth found themselves on the back foot. Cocytus, with his absolute mastery of weapons, could cut through nearly anything: space, time, even the very vectors of force and magic. No barrier, no movement, no law of nature seemed to hold against the edge of his blade. It felt like fighting inevitability.
But as the fight dragged on, their instincts kicked in. Meliodas and Elizabeth began adapting, adjusting their rhythm and angles. Their teamwork slowly filled in the gaps Cocytus exploited earlier, their synergy creating new openings with each pass. The tide of battle began to even out.
Cocytus, of course, was adapting too. He responded in kind, sharpening his counters, pushing their coordination to its limits. The clash between the three became a spectacle—each blow a blur, each dodge a breath from death.
From the outside, it looked like a stalemate. A perfect balance of power and precision with no clear winner. But Cocytus didn't see it that way.
He could tell—they were holding back. Both Meliodas and Elizabeth were conserving their strength, clearly reserving their true power for the incoming waves of demons and goddess clan members. They also seemed to be scared of Absolute Zero, as they wanted him to use up his MP. Every time he used his sword to cut a vector, or something like that, it cost him MP.
They could have ended this fight more quickly, but instead, they paced themselves, drawing things out just long enough to wear him down.
Cocytus felt it—beneath his cold, unshakable exterior, a quiet panic took root. The strength granted by his Supreme Weapon Master Mode was not endless. Time was slipping away, and with each second, his edge dulled ever so slightly.
Still, he had no choice. He pressed forward, blade swinging with relentless precision. He had to hold the line, buy time for Nazarick's arrival—no matter the cost.
"You're growing weaker," Meliodas said coldly, his voice slicing through the tension like a blade. The words struck Cocytus harder than any attack—because they were true. His skill was nearing its limit.
Forced to teleport away, Cocytus reappeared high in the sky, trying to put distance between them and catch even a moment to regroup. But in the blink of an eye, Meliodas was already there.
For the first time since their clash began, a dark, ominous symbol flared to life across Meliodas's right face. Cocytus' eyes widened—but before he could react, pain exploded through him. All four of his limbs were severed cleanly, falling away as if they'd never been part of him.
He barely had a second to register the loss before a crushing blow slammed into his chest. Cracks raced across his exoskeleton, and then he was plummeting—rocketing toward the ground like a shattered comet, nearly torn apart by that single, devastating attack.
"What is that?" Meliodas asked, landing above the broken figure of Cocytus, his eyes narrowed as he stared at the looming form of Nazarick, which was now almost fully materialized—solidifying like a divine monolith from another world.
"I… have failed you," Cocytus said weakly, his voice low and strained as he lay broken beneath the sky. The chill in his aura had faded, and the strength in his body was gone. He could feel it—life was slipping from him. The moment of glory he had hoped to preserve for the Supreme Ones was now buried under the weight of his defeat.
Perhaps he should have unleashed one of the overpowered spells—those overpowered, world-ending arts that ignored resistance, bypassed durability, and shattered reason. But he hadn't. Because it would have led to Nazarick being affected, the summoning might have even failed if he used such spells.
"You have failed no one, Cocytus." A deep, commanding voice echoed from within Nazarick—a voice laced with power so overwhelming it made the very air shudder. Meliodas' blood turned cold. That voice wasn't just powerful; it carried the weight of death itself. It rang with a fury so profound that the world seemed to tremble beneath its tone. For the weak, merely hearing such a voice would have spelled instant death.
Then, in the next moment, a simple snap echoed across the heavens. It was sharp, ear-ringing, and deafening.
That single sound rippled through the fabric of reality, warping the very atmosphere with its force. It surged outward like a shockwave, and with that solitary act, Nazarick was given the final push it needed, fully crossing over, solidifying its presence in this new world.
As soon as Nazarick fully merged into the new world, Meliodas and Elizabeth were forced to pause.
From the entrance to the tomb, a figure emerged—an imposing skeleton draped in regal robes, holding the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown. The aura that radiated from him wasn't just thick with death—it was death. Everything it touched perished instantly. Even the hardened ice Cocytus had formed moments earlier crumbled to dust under its oppressive presence.
"You dare to harm my children?" the skeletal overlord asked, his voice cold and absolute. In the blink of an eye, Meliodas was no longer in control of his body.
He gasped, frozen in place, as an unseen force gripped something deep inside him. His eyes widened in horror as the illusion of one of his seven hearts manifested in the air, resting in the hand of the Overlord of Death.
Without mercy, the skeleton clenched his fingers. And the heart shattered.
This was the spell—Grasp Heart—a 9th-tier spell feared for its lethal efficiency. With it, the caster could manifest the heart of their target, seizing it in an ethereal grip to crush it outright. Instant death was the primary effect. But if the target somehow resisted, they would still be afflicted by intense stupefaction or stunned beyond motion.
Meliodas, for all his might, didn't resist. As the illusory heart was crushed in the skeletal Overlord's grasp, Meliodas's body convulsed. Blood erupted from his mouth, staining the air crimson as he staggered. Though the spell didn't kill him since he had more than one heart, the spell's secondary effect overwhelmed him—his limbs locked up, his body frozen mid-air.
Paralyzed and helpless, the once-proud son of the Demon King now floated before a being he couldn't even begin to understand.
"You have more than one heart?" the Overlord of Death asked, his tone laced with genuine surprise. His skeletal fingers loosened slightly, as if puzzled by the resilience of the being before him. But before he could unleash another spell, a beam of radiant holy light came screaming toward him.
Elizabeth's attack was swift and pure, but the air around the Overlord reacted first—his aura of death surged forward like a tide, snuffing out the holy magic before it even reached him. The beam dissolved into nothingness, and Elizabeth's eyes widened in shock.
But she didn't falter. With a sharp breath, she raised her palm to the sky and summoned a radiant orb of holy power. The sphere pulsed with divine energy, strong enough to harm even the highest of demons. She hurled it down with force and fury.
Yet the Overlord simply raised his palm. With the slightest touch, the death-infused aura swallowed the orb whole, killing it in an instant, as though it had never existed.
But Elizabeth didn't just stand by and watch. Without hesitation, she darted forward and caught Meliodas, lifting him into her arms as she flew away at full speed, her wings glowing with divine urgency.
"Stare of Death," Ainz intoned, activating one of the new spells he had recently gained. The glowing red orbs for eyes turned black with the power of death before it shot skyward in pursuit—until it suddenly shattered mid-air, nullified before it could take effect.
Ainz's glowing eyes flickered sharply as he tracked the interference. His gaze locked onto a woman floating in the distance, dressed in a sleek purple outfit. Her expression was calm, but her aura was sharp. The moment she saw him pointing at her, she moved again, ready to counter his next spell.
But Ainz didn't cast a spell. He used a skill. "[Death's Touch]," he declared. And this time, there would be no canceling it.
Instantly, everything Ainz touched began to wither and die—air, space, even the light itself seemed to burn away in the wake of his outstretched hand. Black flames danced along his skeletal fingers, a manifestation of pure death that defied all natural laws. With a single motion, he reached out toward the woman in the distance, ignoring the space between them as if it didn't exist.
Her eyes widened in terror, realizing just how real the threat was. But she didn't waste a single second—vanishing in a flash of light as she teleported away, narrowly escaping the grasp of death itself.