How? How could a tiny creature like that be any sort of threat? Was there something wrong with Halas? If anything, the stele was more threatening than the butterfly. How could a tiny bug be the Dunge-

Impero

Type: Butterfly

Evolution Pattern: Vestige of Absolute Will

"Halas, come closer."

Halas heard a voice call out to him, but it wasn't calling out to the creature with spoken words or worldly sounds. It came from deep within the creature's consciousness. Halas recognized the source to be the butterfly. Halas no longer had any doubts about the tiny creature's true nature, as hard to accept as it was.

[Emotion Matrix: Disappointed.]

Halas did not really come here to challenge something for the right to be the Dungeon Lord. Halas did not care about things like that. Halas wanted to learn something about being alive and about taking life. What would Halas do with a Dungeon? It didn't mean anything to it.

Halas approached. Its body had increased in size in the past few days. After it transformed all the materials it absorbed, its weight only increased a fraction of that mass. In total, Halas gained another ton, and roughly another twenty centimeters to its dimensions. Though, that might not seem as much, it actually made Halas considerably more dangerous, with thicker armor and more devastating weaponry.

As Halas approached the butterfly, it lifted off the stele, flapped its wings and the clouds in the sky were blown away. The butterfly landed on Halas's "nose".

"I guard this place on the orders of my master. Ten thousand years ago, I was just a creature of the sun, the wind and the sky, then I received the Edict."

Halas could see a vision of a butterfly, flying from flower to flower without any cares in the world. Though Halas knew the vision was not real, none of the sensors reported an error. It was as if Halas was truly there, inside the world of that vision.

Then Halas saw a glint of something else, for just a brief moment. The sky was a deep shade of red, and the sun in the sky was black with a brilliant white outline. Green flames, like pillars, pierced the heavens. Within those pillars was a stele, and the ashes of a butterfly upon it.

"I have become weary of the sun, the wind and the sky, and now wish my mortal estate become undone. Tell me, lord of Hell, am I still a creature of this world, or just the remnant of my Master's will?"

"Impero definition: Rule. Command. Subject is remnant of commanding officer's Edict," Halas replied with a booming voice that caused the butterfly to launch off of Halas's skin and fly back to the stele.

[Emotion Matrix: Pity.]

"Thank you," the words bubbled up from within Halas's consciousness and they were filled with true gratitude. "I want you to have this Edict."

A symbol flashed in the air before Halas. The creature did not recognize the symbol, but it understood the meaning on a fundamental level. It was forgiveness.

You have gained the Amnesty Edict.

All sins can be forgiven, and even demons can become saints.

"With this gift, I am sure you can return to where you were meant to be. You don't belong in this world."

A sensation rose in the depths of Halas's spirit, if it truly had such a thing, and this emotion wasn't a plastic, manufactured thing. It was a true feeling that only a creature with a real heart could feel. It was the sensation of remembering the smell of a mother's cooking, as the child approached the door of the ancestral home. It was the feeling of photograph-covered walls embracing the forlorn soul and mending it.

[Emotion Matrix: Yearning.]

[Emotion Index: Dangerous levels.]

[Override.]

[Gate Voltage: Clamped.]

"Negative," Halas roared, causing the ground to shake.

Halas now truly understood how dangerous this creature was. It was not just a butterfly. It was the memory of being one. To whom this memory belonged to, Halas could only conjecture. A lord of Creation or Hell? Pitiful creature. It, ironically, desired to be set free of its subjugating nature. It, too, yearned to return to its original form of freedom.

[Laser battery armed.]

[Charging...]

Lights appeared on Halas's joints as the laser chambers focused the electromagnetic radiation. At first the light was red, then violet, then black, before completely disappearing. A whining sound filled the area, gaining pitch until the frequency went beyond levels of human hearing. But Halas could still hear it. The creature's whole body vibrated with the sound on a molecular level, and the creature realized something went horribly wrong.

[Laser Class Upgrade: X Ray -> Gamma Ray.]

The sound returned, and this time it was an all-encompassing hum. Like a transformer working overtime to wrestle the powers of electricity into submission. The sound was so loud, the ground cracked.

[Laser Class Upgrade: Gamma Ray -> Graviton Beam.]

Particles and space started to break down to fundamental fragments of spacetime. The laser chambers were not designed for this kind of beam, and neither was this type of weapon within Halas's specifications that it had recovered from the Education Module.

[Abort signal discarded.]

[Runaway reaction.]

[Unable to purge laser weapon.]

[Laser Frequency: Sub-planck.]

[Laser Class: Unknown. ERROR.]

"So you wish to be the torment of this world? I was wrong about you."

[Charging complete.]

[Firing.]

The world twisted around the beam that speared as far as the eye could see. It was as if space itself fell into the beam, and it was like looking into a black hole. The beam was completely black, and Halas could see both sides of it simultaneously; even the beginning and the end.

The sub-planck frequency punched holes into space itself creating micro singularities all along the path of the beam. As these singularities evaporated away, they released an immense amount of energy.

Within a microsecond, the world the butterfly created was incinerated, including everyone within it.