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"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."

—Sirius Black

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"Is that a Starbucks cappuccino in your hand?" The old man Caretaker asked the moment he saw Rudeus getting out of his boom tube.

"... I get out of a literal red swirling portal and the first thing you wonder is why I am holding a cappuccino?" Rudeus asked with a frown.

"Well there aren't that many Starbucks or any other cafes near this cemetery, so I don't really get to drink fancy stuff like that regularly. Say, you don't have an extra cup in there somewhere, right? I mean I could use a coffee as well, maybe with extra sugar." The Caretaker, aka, Carter Slade stared at his coffee cup with unrestrained greed in his eyes.

"No, I don't," Rudeus said as he quickly finished his cappuccino in a single gulp and threw away the cup in his inventory to dispose of it later. He was quite environment-friendly after all although he had probably destroyed more nature with his power during his battles than even the most evil corporations.

"I think we can talk about coffee after we save my gir... friend. She needs our help right now. Her name is Roxane Simpson. Blackheart kidnapped her and is now demanding the San Venganza contract in exchange for her. And we will give him exactly that. Atem, I did consider your proposal. I think the Ghost Rider spirit inside me can defeat Blackheart by burning his sinful soul once he absorbs those souls in the contract as his own. So we will follow that plan." Blaze said with determination.

This however didn't fool Rudeus. He knew that Blaze would give up that contract to Blackheart even if Rudeus hadn't told him about the plan, just so that he could save the love of his life. And Rudeus even admired him because of that.

But he didn't say anything because now he had his own plan. He no longer wanted to let Blackheart burn away by Ghost Rider's penance stare. No, now he wanted to absorb Blackheart through his new crystal and get a magic nuke with the combined energy of the weakened Blackheart and the thousand damned sinful souls.

He had even thought of trying to absorb Blackheart into himself like he had forced Dracula's essence to be absorbed by Lilith Drake. But he wasn't sure that he could do the same thing with Blackheart since the demon prince had much more willpower, strength and was even a higher being of existence than the King of vampires.

He was not sure that he would be able to easily absorb a conceptual existence like Blackheart so easily into him without being corrupted or changed somehow even with the presence of his defensive perks like 'Incomprehensible mind' and 'Anchored soul'.

Plus he was not even sure that he would even be compatible with a demon prince's power since he himself was a god. After all, Lilith was able to house Dracula's vampiric might since she herself was his own daughter, had similar unique vampiric powers, and therefore was extremely compatible with him.

'Well, I should meet Lilith soon and see how her takeover over all the vampiric forces around the world is going. Even her father, Dracula himself had trouble in uniting all vampires and forcing them to obey. But I am sure she will fare better, especially since currently she is as strong as her father in his peak, if not even stronger.' He thought to himself.

He had truly made a beast out of her after giving her Dracula's essence. It simply didn't just give her a power of 1+1 but actually changed her entirely. It strengthened her very being of existence.

As Rudeus was having all these thoughts, he and the other two ghost riders had already reached the outskirts of the San Venganza town's ruins.

Blaze and Caretaker had ridden their monster bike and horse respectively while Rudeus just flew alongside them. He wanted to ask for a ride on the Ghost Rider's bike to experience how riding on a burning monster cycle from hell felt but didn't since that would make the situation a lot more awkward than it needs to be. Rudeus also needed to maintain his mighty image as a god in front of people so he grudgingly just flew in the air while watching the Ghost riders comfortably riding their rides and even doing some stunts from time to time.

All of them stopped when they reached the outskirts of the abandoned ghost town as the Caretaker didn't want to go further than this for some reason. He still had more responsibilities and more 'stuff' to take care according to him.

So he just left after handing over some type of supernatural being hunting gun to Blaze.

Rudeus saw the gun and made a note to himself to ask Blaze for it later to study and replicate it for his followers against supernatural threats in the future. He was sure that Morgana and Selene would be quite easily able to replicate a gun like that.

Blaze looked at his gun for some time looking like he was trying to decide something important and finally made his decision. He kept the gun with his monster cycle and tried to concentrate on his mind.

Rudeus couldn't understand what he was trying to do but it soon became clear as his body slowly began to smoke and turn red looking like his skin and flesh were burning away and turning into ash.

Soon Johnny Blaze was completely gone as the human was burned away and what stood in his place was the Spirit of Vengeance, the Ghost Rider.

"Tonight, the wicked will burn." The fiery hunter of evil said as he looked at Rudeus and gestured to follow him toward the city. The Ghost Rider looked pretty confident and chill in a weird way like always.

As the two slowly entered the fog-covered city, they felt the strange atmosphere around as a chill-inducing silence coupled with gloomy coldness. It gave even Rudeus some goosebumps. No, it was not because of Blackheart but because he suddenly remembered all the horror movies like The Nun, Conjuring, and Insidious he had seen in his past life all at once.

It was a good thing that he had transmigrated into Marvel and even that as a New god and not into one of those horror-filled worlds as some demon/ghost hunter or something.

Anyways, this time there was no sudden attack from any water demon since Ghost Rider had already destroyed all of Blackheart's subordinates. But instead when they went into the center of the city, they saw something else. They saw dozens of red demons looking like demonic imps surrounding Blackheart and Roxanne who was lying on the ground in front of him.

"Hello, old friends. I was waiting for you both. Truthfully, I expected more guests to come with you today but I guess pride is the bane of us all, isn't it? I even called up some favors because of that and summoned up these old... servants of mine. Anyways, do you want to hand over the contract the easy way or the hard way? But do remember, my little servants here can slash a girl's throat faster than you can say, Vengeance." Blackheart gave an evil feral smile, confident that he had the upper hand.

He didn't. Rudeus still had the upper hand. He could rescue Roxanne and deposit her into his inventory or send her away through a boom tube at the speed of sound, faster than any of those demons could even react.

But he didn't want to do that because it was not the plan. The plan was to first let Blackheart absorb the cursed spirits in overconfidence. Because if they were to rescue Roxanne first and still handed over the contract to him, Blackheart could get suspicious and Rudeus didn't want that. What he wanted was a brand new magic bomb for private use and he would have that no matter what.

'Maybe I am getting too obsessed with the idea of having a pocket magic nuke.' He thought to himself.

But Rudeus didn't say anything because it was actually not even his decision. The decision was Ghost Rider's. The Spirit of Vengeance looked at the contract in his hand and then took a look at the unconscious Roxanne lying on the ground and then gave a final look towards Rudeus before throwing the contract towards Blackheart.

The Prince of hell quickly caught the contract in a hurry as he skimmed through the contents written on it. After he got an understanding of it, he just spread his hand and yelled "ALL COME TO ME" in an arrogant victorious tone of voice.

Soon, dark cursed spirits began to rise from every part of the town as they all crawled and writhed toward Blackheart, desperately trying to reach the demon prince. They all merged with him as soon as they came in contact with him.

As all thousand dark spirits were devoured by Blackheart, his own appearance too changed. He could no longer hold his human disguise as he became taller and bulkier. His skin changed into dark blue color as he grew a spiky tail as well as needle-like porcupine hair. His eyes became blood red as his face looked more and more like that of some sort of piranha monster.

'Well, his appearance is a little different from that of the movies but nothing that can't be handled. Now, all I have to do is just weaken him enough and absorb his essence and energy when he is careless.' He thought as he looked towards his battle partner Ghost Rider to see his expression.

But the moment he looked at the Spirit of Vengeance, he saw something that he hadn't ever seen on the skull's face from the very start. He saw worry and a lack of the overwhelming confidence he was sporting before.

"You know, many sorcerers misunderstand the purpose of the Contract of Venganza. They think that my father made the contract because he could become all-powerful using just a thousand damned souls. But that could not be further from the truth. There are millions of cursed souls even darker and fouler than these in Hell.

No, the reason the Contract of Venganza was made using the population of an entire town was that he didn't just want a thousand cursed souls but a thousand damned souls that could stay on this realm, corrupting an entire town enough, that in time the Lord of Hell himself could not only claim the souls but this entire location and descend upon this realm in his true form while bringing hell with him through this cursed town." Blackheart said in a deep terrifying voice like it came straight from some cheap exorcism horror movie.

Rudeus was surprised to hear this. He had no idea about the true purpose of the San Venganza contract. If what Blackheart said was true then the implication of this could mean...

"Descend my servants. Bring forth hell into the land of the living and cover the world in eternal darkness." Blackheart announced as he laughed voraciously.

The entire town began to be covered with a demonic magical barrier as the sky above turned darker and the ground began to crack into pieces with lava spewing from the cracks. More and more demon soldiers began to rise up as their numbers soon reached hundreds.

The entire space of the town was now cut off from the real world as it was both a part of hell and a part of the human realm. It was supposed to be the main base that Blackheart would use to slowly expand his new empire, his own new realm throughout Earth. In here the demon prince didn't even need to worry about the realm barrier made by the sorcerers to protect the planet. This was his home field now.

Rudeus was calm as he still felt that he wasn't really in any actual danger since he could always escape through a boom tube in the worst-case scenario as he had already tested that his boom tubes were still working in this space that was cut off from the rest of the mortal world. Also even though Blackheart could use his full power while being in this space, it didn't change the fact, that most of his original powers were taken away by his own devil of a father, Mephisto.

"Well, I guess it won't be as easy as we initially thought. So what now? Wanna fight or wanna regroup or something?" Rudeus asked as he glanced at the Spirit of Vengeance who was looking at the demons with hateful eyes.

Rudeus had already secured Roxanne in his inventory to make sure that she would not be a liability in their fight against the demon prince and his army.

"Now, now we teach these demons the meaning of pain." Ghost Rider finally decided after thinking for a second.

"As you wish. I guess I can finally go all out since technically this place is temporarily cut off from the rest of the mundane world." Rudeus said as he cracked his fingers with a confident smile on his face.

But just as he was gonna begin his process of letting himself loose on the demons, he heard his second favorite sound in the world, his first being the moans of his girls.

[Ding! Quest generated. World choice detected...]

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