Maltimus

Maltimus is the natural-born demigod called the Lord of Hell, an ancient power whose survival and authority are tied to the nine floors of hell. He treats conflict as exchange, prefers possession and layered schemes to straightforward invasion, and habitually attacks an enemy's judgment before attacking the body. His relationship with Lucien Evans shifts among attempted murder, strategic observation, rivalry, and temporary coalition, always according to Maltimus's calculation of which outcome best preserves his position. (Chapters 433, 621–645, 760–768, and 812–823)

Biography

Primordial ambition and the long approach to the material world

Maltimus awakened around the beginning of the Age of Mythology alongside Alterna and the Will of Abyss. Unlike the indiscriminately violent Abyss, he devoted himself to gathering power and investigating why false gods emerged. Rhine's account credits him with naming the “power of faith” and using false gods as experimental subjects, although Rhine only suspects—rather than proves—that Maltimus later released knowledge to Thanos. The final war of that age severed the stable channels to the main material world and confined the Lord of Hell to his own domain. From then on, his central practical problem was how to find a body or ritual capable of carrying a demigod's strength into the material world. (Chapter 782)

His concern reaches beyond conquest. While secretly following Lucien toward the Chamber of Immortality, Maltimus reflects that even the hell supporting his continued existence may eventually decay with the world. Immortality therefore matters to him as an escape from cosmic extinction, not merely as a method of surviving a battle. He spends centuries pursuing the World of Souls and its chamber, learns how to manipulate the states associated with primeval devils, and repeatedly tests indirect paths of arrival. Those efforts give his schemes continuity even when individual projections, vessels, or conspiracies are destroyed. (Chapters 621–645)

Later retrospective chapters reveal one such early attempt. Maltimus secretly controls Godfrey City near the Dark Mountain Range and prepares a blood sacrifice large enough to bring him through a devilish gate. The Church discovers the operation and Pope Gregory destroys the city and the arriving shadow with God's Arrival. At first the result appears to be a humiliating failure, but Douglas and Fernando infer that Maltimus knowingly paid for the pope's attention and exhaustion so that a more important scheme could proceed elsewhere. The corpus does not disclose every hidden step, but it establishes that his apparent defeat creates the opening from which the Congress and its allies expect the next political upheaval. (Chapters 904 and 908)

Geno, Lucien, and the Chamber of Immortality

In the main narrative, Maltimus uses the dead saint Geno as both an identity and a medium. Geno's body and godhood let him infiltrate a denomination within the North Church, deceive priests, and wield stolen divine power, though the holy nature of the vessel conflicts with his demigod power and slows him. He waits until Lucien enters the Temple of Spirits and reveals himself only when the sorcerer is isolated. The attack is revenge for Lucien and Alterna's earlier ambush, but it is also part of Maltimus's pursuit of the World of Souls: he pressures Lucien with Light of Judgment, Purging Spear, overwhelming speed, and approaching undead rather than wasting the vessel in one uncontrolled strike. (Chapters 621–622)

Lucien escapes through the Furnace of Souls and eventually reaches the Realm of Gates with Rhine. Maltimus does not abandon the expedition. He conceals his trace with Alterna's air on Lucien, follows through Thanos's laboratory, and approaches the Pathway of Immortality in a form meant to preserve surprise. He intends to sacrifice Geno's body, arrive more fully, and erase Lucien, Rhine, and Mecantron after the Chamber reveals its secret. The plan is careful but conditional: the expected revelation must be valuable enough to justify the cost. (Chapters 642–644)

When the chamber shows only a seemingly intangible cosmos, Maltimus's anticipated triumph turns into disappointment. Alterna's projection arrives, Mecantron becomes wary, and the commercial logic governing Maltimus's decisions changes. He refuses to spend Geno's body for a view he does not understand, gives up revenge while Alterna is present, and leaves instead of escalating. His reaction exposes both a strength and a weakness: he can abandon sunk costs faster than prideful enemies, but he dismisses an unexplained phenomenon because its value is not immediately legible. Fernando later mocks that failure to ask the right questions. (Chapters 644–645)

Possessing Harex and achieving stable arrival

Maltimus's most successful material-world scheme targets Harex, the Master of the Boundless Ocean. Harex believes he is using a Dark Jellyfish as a safe proxy for transformation into the state of primeval devils. Maltimus has already entered that transformed mass and waits until greed commits Harex to the ritual. Once exposed, he turns the victim's fear, despair, and even suicidal resolve into openings: because negative feeling is the medium of primeval devils, every emotional reaction that should strengthen Harex's resistance instead lowers the barrier between them. Maltimus's mockery is consequently a functional weapon of possession rather than idle boasting. (Chapters 760–761)

Lucien, Natasha Violet, and Aglaea break the Blue Torrent and apparently destroy both Harex and the invading shadow, but Maltimus has left part of himself inside Emperor's Grasp. The gold trident carries his influence into the victors' anger, allowing him to possess their shadows briefly while he completes the integration elsewhere. He reconstitutes the transformed body, manifests the nine floors of hell, claims the trident and Blue Gate, and reaches the material world with most of a demigod's strength. Harex's murloc legs and the incomplete head reveal that the arrival is still not absolutely perfect, but it is stable enough to overcome the normal dimensional rejection. (Chapters 761–763)

Maltimus disrupts Lucien and Natasha's Regather from outside ordinary space and nearly destroys the Shield of Truth with one hand. Lucien's Positron Cannon obliterates that arm and forces Maltimus to use Sinful Rebirth, but the demigod restores himself and lets the battered pair reach the Atomic Universe. He also allows Aglaea to escape instead of turning the scene into an extended chase. The result gives him the Blue Gate, Harex's body, a palace under the Boundless Ocean, and a permanent base from which he attacks Church territory. It also alarms every faction enough to change their deployments, showing that a scheme can be successful even when its final combat does not produce a kill. (Chapters 762–764)

Rivalry, coalition, and Viken's defeat

Stable arrival does not make Maltimus an ally of the Congress. When Lucien appears to attempt demigod advancement in the World of Souls, Maltimus joins Viken to stop him; neither demigod wants a new rival. He surrounds Fernando and the false ritual with a projection of hell, deliberately prolongs his struggle with Monster Viken so that he can study the pope's weakness, and assumes there will still be time to destroy the ritual. The delay is exploited against him: Monster Viken becomes the offering for a prepared gate, the Will of Abyss arrives, and Maltimus is trapped fighting his primordial enemy while Douglas completes the real advancement in Allyn. His insistence on extracting every possible advantage costs him the objective he was meant to secure. (Chapters 788 and 791–795)

When Viken later begins absorbing Mountain Paradise and the primeval hell, Maltimus recognizes a threat greater than another demigod's rise. The primeval hell is closely linked to him, and a successful true god would be able to destroy existing demigods permanently. He immediately attacks Viken beside Alterna and Douglas, using Life Deprivation and the manifested power of hell to break Blessed Realm. Even after their combined attacks fail to stop the process, he rejects his usual instinct to retreat because there will be no later opportunity for a scheme if Viken completes the transformation. (Chapters 812–816)

Lucien's advancement slows Viken's progress and gives Maltimus a more drastic option. He tears off his left arm in both his material vessel and his real body, converting the sacrifice into a chaotic gate that strengthens the coalition's access to the primeval hell and the Will of Abyss. He continues attacking while Viken advances, transforms into hell itself to impede the tide feeding the ritual, and joins Alterna and Douglas in protecting the other legends after Lucien breaks the boundary between god and mortals. The sacrifice and cooperation are not altruistic: Maltimus acts because Viken's success means his own end, but his intervention is nonetheless essential to keeping the coalition in the battle. (Chapters 817–822)

Viken is ultimately consumed inside Lucien's cognitive world. Maltimus considers preserving Viken to maintain a balance against Lucien, but Douglas and Alterna remain alert and deny him the opening. Faced with a stronger new order, he chooses submission over a battle he cannot profitably win. He survives the final conflict, retains his connection to hell, and enters the post-Viken balance as an unwilling but rational participant rather than a defeated corpse. (Chapter 823)

Appearance and personality

Maltimus's true manifested form is enormous and partly indistinct. Black wings spread behind him, goatlike horns rise from the shadow of his head, black scales and sulfurous flame cover his hands, pale bone spurs and long nails resemble weapons, and crimson eyes shine with perpetual mockery. When the Harex vessel is incomplete, its lower body retains murloc legs and its later public form keeps sapphire scales and a blue crown. His presence brings visions of all nine floors of hell: volcanoes, bottomless canyons, frozen plains, fortresses, swamps, and the Styx. (Chapters 762–763)

He also spends long periods in borrowed appearances. As Geno, he looks like a young man in a white North Church robe whose red eyes and slight smile betray the Lord of Hell to someone who has seen the clues before. In emotional or primeval-devil states he may be only a wriggling black mass, an attached shadow, or a presence distributed through negative feelings. These forms are strategic vessels rather than disguises for social comfort; Maltimus chooses each one for access to a power system, a ritual, or a victim. (Chapters 621, 642, and 760–763)

Maltimus is sarcastic, patient, acquisitive, and relentlessly transactional. He describes enemies as “little friends,” laughs while exposing their mistakes, and presents retreat as a calculation rather than a humiliation. His mockery has a mechanical purpose in mental combat because fear, greed, despair, and anger make targets easier for him to enter. He can cooperate sincerely while interests align, betray without moral hesitation when the balance changes, or abandon revenge the moment its cost exceeds the return. (Chapters 621–645, 760–764, and 791–795)

His most enduring motivation is survival through understanding and control. He seeks the Chamber of Immortality because hell itself may not be everlasting, studies primeval devils and the power of faith, and values information about rival demigods almost as much as immediate victory. Yet this intelligence is not infallibility. He is vulnerable to unfamiliar arcana, underestimates Lucien's prepared traps, and can lose strategic time while trying to turn one confrontation into several profits. (Chapters 644–645, 760–764, and 791–793)

Demigod power and abilities

Maltimus is a natural-born demigod whose capabilities derive from his own transformed existence, the nine floors of hell, and the negative feelings associated with the state of primeval devils. The corpus does not provide a chronological formal-rank transition for him: he enters recorded history as an established demigod and remains one. His power changes chiefly through the quality of his vessel, the degree to which he can arrive outside hell, and sacrifices or temporary states rather than through numbered levels. (Chapters 433, 644, 760–764, and 812–823)

Hell-bound immortality and dimensional limits

Maltimus cannot be permanently killed while hell exists. His true self remains in or closely tied to hell while projections, incarnations, and vessels operate elsewhere; destroyed portions can return through Sinful Rebirth. The connection is not identity in a simple sense: Maltimus explains that he and the primeval hell have a relationship of duality but are not the same being, even though damage to or absorption of the primeval hell threatens him directly. His latest state remains that of a surviving demigod connected to hell. (Chapters 644, 762–763, 812, and 823)

The severance at the end of the Age of Mythology prevents his unrestricted arrival in the main material world. Lesser projections do not carry all his strength, suitable top-legendary vessels are rare, and forcing a full arrival may consume a body or require enormous blood sacrifice. Geno's holy godhood is incompatible with him and slows his demigod power; Harex's transformed body and the Blue Gate support a much stronger, stable arrival, but even that manifestation retains incomplete features. These limits explain his preference for conspiracies that manufacture the correct medium before open combat begins. (Chapters 621, 644, 760–764, 782, and 908)

Primeval-devil possession and emotional manipulation

Maltimus understands primeval devils better than the sorcerers and legends attempting to imitate them. After entering a transformed proxy, he merges with the target through negative feelings. Greed draws Harex into the ritual; panic, despair, and the wish for mutual destruction each become an “invitation” that reduces resistance. Verbal humiliation intensifies those emotions, so his continuous taunts directly advance the possession. Once part of the integration is complete, ordinary physical efforts cannot easily pull the two minds apart. (Chapters 760–761)

He can also leave influence in an object or cast through the shadows of those who touch it. Emperor's Grasp carries his attack into Lucien, Natasha, and Aglaea after they believe he has been destroyed. Mental Fulmination, the Sword of Truth, and Aglaea's nature-state expel the attached shadows, demonstrating direct counters: the victim must recognize that the emotion is being manipulated and use a sufficiently powerful mental, existential, or nature-based purification. A calm, defended mind is harder to enter than one already consumed by anger or despair. (Chapters 761–763)

Dominion of hell and Life Deprivation

When Maltimus manifests his own power, the nine floors of hell overlap the surrounding space. He can call enormous devils, sulfurous fire, volcanoes, swamps, frozen plains, and the evil waters of the Styx, and he can spread the incarnation of hell as defense or battlefield control. In the final struggle, his dispersed hell-state drags at the tide around Viken when ordinary supernatural powers are disabled. The projection can be disrupted by other primordial forces, top-legendary barriers, or sufficiently great energy, but it lets Maltimus fight over a vast area without relying on one conventional body. (Chapters 762–763, 791–793, and 812–820)

Life Deprivation is his most explicit signature attack. Directed through Emperor's Grasp after the Harex possession, it strips vitality from Viken's Blessed Realm and helps collapse the divine defense under a combined demigod assault. Its effect is broadly applicable to living or life-associated power rather than limited to a single organism. Strong demigod defenses can absorb or restore the damage, so it is decisive as part of a coordinated breach rather than an automatic execution of an equal. (Chapters 812–813)

Speed, time resistance, and cross-space reach

Even the Geno projection moves so quickly that Lucien initially mistakes the displacement for teleportation. It leaves afterimages, evades repeated sword-light attacks, and remains immune to the altered time flow of the Moon Timer. Gravity Collapse can restrain the projection briefly, but Maltimus breaks the cage, and ordinary legendary attacks fail to damage the layered Blessed Realm around him. The projection's holy vessel slows his native power, which means these feats are below the demonstrated strength of his stronger material arrival. (Chapters 621–622)

His reach is not limited to ordinary travel. After Lucien and Natasha activate Regather, Maltimus extends a hand into the strange transit state, breaks their spell from outside its expected route, and attacks them at the point where they reappear. Abrupt Magic Reverse, Storm Barrier, the Shield of Truth, and immediate escape into a demiplane barely keep them alive. This interception requires his near-complete Harex arrival and proximity to the Blue Gate; the story does not establish that every lesser projection can intrude into Regather in the same way. (Chapter 762)

Stolen divine power and adaptive spell use

Through Geno, Maltimus steals and imitates divine power from the North Church. He casts Light of Judgment, Purging Spear, Blessed Realm, and related holy defenses with an appearance so convincing that he briefly resembles the God of Truth more than a devil. Light of Judgment tears through Lucien's layered protection; Purging Spear degrades the isolated space around the Shield of Truth; Blessed Realm resists Vengeful Gaze. These are vessel-derived powers, not proof that his native hell-state is inherently holy, and their incompatibility with his demigod nature reduces his speed and efficiency. (Chapters 621–622)

Maltimus rapidly adapts to unfamiliar attacks. Sinful Rebirth restores an arm obliterated by Positron Cannon, dispersal through negative feelings helps him survive mass energy, and his mental influence persists after an apparent bodily destruction. He nevertheless lacks automatic answers to new arcana: Lucien's antimatter attack wounds and surprises him, while prepared forces such as the Will of Abyss can occupy him long enough for another plan to succeed. His resilience therefore depends on recovery, escape, and distributed existence rather than absolute invulnerability. (Chapters 761–763 and 791–794)

Schemes, bargains, and strategic limitations

Maltimus's planning is itself a major capability. He keeps vessels and churches in reserve, uses visible failures to hide greater operations, waits for enemies to construct the medium he needs, and interprets cooperation as a temporary contract of interests. He can preserve a scheme for decades and accept severe damage to his projection if the expenditure distracts a more powerful enemy. These feats rely on information, preparation, and the predictable desires of other people, not on supernatural certainty. (Chapters 621–645, 760–764, 904, and 908)

His central weakness is that maximizing profit can conflict with completing the immediate objective. At the Chamber of Immortality he abandons inquiry when the reward is not obvious. While opposing the false demigod ritual, he slows down to study Monster Viken and loses the time needed to prevent the Congress's trap. He also cannot compel cooperation from peers whose power and incentives are properly aligned against him. The final battle leaves him alive precisely because he recognizes this limit and accepts the balance imposed by Lucien, Douglas, and Alterna. (Chapters 644–645, 791–795, and 823)

Power progression

Relationships

• Lucien Evans: Maltimus repeatedly targets Lucien as a dangerous source of unfamiliar power and an ally of Alterna, first through Geno and later through Harex. Lucien wounds, deceives, or escapes him often enough to change that hostility into wary respect, and the two ultimately fight on the same side only when Viken threatens them both.
• Alterna: Alterna is Maltimus's primordial peer, rival, and occasional ally. Their ambushes and strategic opposition stretch across the World of Souls and the material world, but their shared interest in preventing Viken's true-god ascent produces genuine battlefield cooperation.
• Viken: Maltimus and Viken exchange information and temporary support while trying to exploit each other's demigod weaknesses. Maltimus helps Viken oppose a supposed new demigod, then turns against him without hesitation when Viken attempts to absorb the primeval hell and become a true god.
• Douglas: Douglas seeks Maltimus as a possible strategic counterweight during the Congress's vulnerable early years and later fights beside him against Viken. Maltimus initially resists the rise of another sorcerer-demigod, but Douglas's successful advancement and final vigilance help force him to accept the new balance.
• Fernando: Fernando confronts Maltimus directly in the World of Souls, restraining him with Storm Barrier and later helping turn Monster Viken into a gate for the Will of Abyss. He also studies Maltimus's apparent failures as evidence of deeper schemes, even while deriding the Lord of Hell for missed intellectual insights.
• Aglaea: Aglaea interrupts Maltimus's possession of Harex with nature magic and helps destroy the visible vessel, but her timing still gives him enough opportunity to finish the integration. Maltimus does not pursue her afterward, preferring to secure the Blue Gate and his new material-world position.