Kill Six Billion Demons: book one (part 1)

This review was commissioned by @Gore17


I've seen the name. I've seen nothing but the name. I know it's semi-popular on SV. Just going by the title, I've always pictured something along the lines of that old RIP AND TEAR YOUR GUTS Doom comic, but I have no idea how close that actually is. Still, with a title like this, I'll feel pretty let down if huge demons with huge guts are not ripped and torn in some capacity.

I like Blazing Third Eye Girl's character design, if nothing else. Cover art is surprisingly laid back overall given the name. Let's get going!


We start with a quote, from Psalms. "YISUN said: let there be no genesis, for beginnings are false, and I am a consummate liar." This quote confused me for a bit, because I was pretty sure I didn't remember anyone named "Yisun" in Psalms, or elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures for that matter. Some quick googling tells me that this is a quote from a completely fictitious book from the world of Kill Six Billion Demons that coincidentally shares a name with a real life holy text. So, that's a thing I guess. Anyway, this is the kind of sentence that doesn't make much sense without context, so I assume it'll only become understandable once I've read a ways into the comic.

The first actual page shows a (much) more crudely drawn version of Third Eye Girl about to lose her virginity to a fellow college student. Her nervousness about this is unfortunate, because they only have so long before his face falls off and scatters across the bed.

Also, is there another drunken hookup simultaneously taking place outside the window? If not, why are the speech bubbles coming from there?

We're off to a great start. :/

They keep trying, she keeps chickening out but then apologizing. He's getting increasingly frustrated, but he always stops when she tells him to, and repeatedly asks if she doesn't want to do this after all, to which she insists anxiously that she does. Then he accidentally rips her bra. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's not rapey, I'll give him that. Though even that doesn't seem quite sufficient to explain his mistaking her terrified scream at seeing the hulking, gas mask-wearing demon sneaking up behind him for a cry of pleasure.

Yeah that's right dumbass, she's screaming in pleasure without you having so much as fondled any erogenous zones yet.​

I'm preeeeetty sure she's not the only virgin in this hookup. And no, I'm not talking about the demon (well, maybe him too, but there's no evidence either way yet).

He finally notices what she's screaming at and starts screaming as well. The demon holds up a glowing, key-like object and begins to speak, first in some incomprehensible eldritch tongue and then switching to English. Unfortunately, he only manages to say the English word "king" before a bunch of other demons riding weird horse-lizard monster things appear and literally rip his head off, and also grab the boy and carry him away into a portal. In his last, headless moment, the now-headless first demon reaches out and implants the glowing key thing into the girl's brow, turning her into the Ineffable Blazing Third Eye Girl.

The demon, who I'll just call Elfangor for now, is dragged away with his head disintegrated by the other demons. Third Eye Girl's skull disassembles itself in an abstract, delirious set of visuals that I don't think is supposed to be taken literally, but who knows. Then she's intact again, but in hell.

Or...well, I don't think it's right to call this "hell." It doesn't appear to be a place of suffering or imprisonment, and the creatures here don't seem to be Judeo-Christian demons going by their behavior. She's in a city under an alien sky, whose demonic inhabitants stop to regard her curiously and try to ask questions in their own language. Further away from her, others seem to just be buying and selling things at a market, begging at alleyway entrances, and generally just acting like people in any premodern city.

...

At a guess, there's some kind of intrademonic war going on, and Elfangor sent her to his own faction's homeland with the important doohickey implanted in her because he was desperate and had no other option. Something along those lines. I think.

...

Cut to inside a nearby building. An imposing armed and armored demon warrior is confronting a smaller, older demon who apparently runs this establishment, which is apparently a brothel. He accuses Pimpdemon of being the mastermind behind a local smuggling cartel, which he denies. He also accuses Pimpdemon of using slave prostitutes, which - while not illegal in this land - pisses him off something fierce. Pimpdemon then starts making cracks about the intruder's gender (he's male, but apparently looks female to Pimpdemon), and then seems to...not sure how to read this...I think he's suspecting that the intruder is a transman and deliberately misgendering him or something? He also offers him a job at the brothel, saying that people will pay a lot to touch an angel.

Okay, so this guy is an angel apparently. Wouldn't have known the difference, aside from him having fancier looking armor than Pimpdemon's own goons.

Just as one of Pimpdemon's enforcers is about to cheapshot the angel from behind, Third Eye comes tumbling through the second story window and happens to distract said enforcer at a critical moment.

Thanks to this distraction, the angel wins initiative and - after praying to a litany of gods or sages or something, one of which is the Yisun guy who we've read about in Bizarro-Psalms - starts martial artsing the thugs to a pulp. Pimpdemon himself manages to escape in the chaos, but the angel seems moderately pleased with having at least chased him out of his main base. The angel then turns to thank the human for the distraction, seeming not to realize how accidental that was, but then notices the weird glowing thing in her forehead and stops midsentence.

The whole "tower and secret name of God" thing suggests that this is somewhat closer to Judeo-Christian lore than I initially thought (assuming that this "angel" actually knows what it's talking about with greater certainty than our own religious folks can). Also, a "Key of Kings," eh? Interesting.

There's another, much longer this time, quote from Bizarro-Psalms. One of Yisun's disciples, a skeptical and intellectual fellow named Hansa (as opposed to another, briefly mentioned, acolyte named Pree Ashma who is said to have been more of a restless conqueror type), asks Yisun how to comprehend space and time. Yisun answers with some koans about ants and giants that are hard to follow, and the overall message seems to be about needing to embrace one's own insignificance in order to understand the greater universe. Fitting for what's currently happening to our fish-out-of-water protagonist, I suppose.

The next normal page has Keygirl waking up in the angel's...barrack? Apartment? It looks like an odd hybrid of medieval and modern middle class apartment fixtures. There's coffee and some cups set out, and Keygirl reaches for one as she slowly wakes up and realizes that whole thing wasn't a fever dream, but is prevented from drinking any.

Just noticed the hamsa symbol on the angel's amulet. We Kabbalah now.

The angel (or "concordant knight," specifically. That's either a synonym for an angel or a particular type or class of angels, from how he says it) seems to think that she must have stolen the Key. He also accuses her of being "vatra," and asks her which gate she comes from, which lord she worships, and what kind of sorcery she used to steal a Key of Kings. And also gets mad when she misgenders him, much like he did at Pimpdemon. The girl finally freaks out enough to convince the angel that she's not a sorcerer, she has no idea where she is or why any of this is happening, her boyfriend got captured by monsters, and someone randomly jammed the Key of Kings into her head.

The angel sits back down and offers her some coffee. As they drink, he (or...is it a they? An it? I'll go with he for now) opens a wall-window and lets her see the city(?) below.

This realm of blue mist and skyscraper-sized demon statue buildings is called "Throne." According to the angel, it is a hub world or nexus that connects every other realm of creation. It gets its name because it used to be the personal domain of God, but he abandoned it a very long time ago, and its been getting more chaotic and run-down ever since.

Since the girl doesn't know anything about any of this, the angel infers that her world is behind an "unopened gate" and has therefore not yet been conquered. Alright, sounds like there's an interdimensional empire that's been using Throne as a method of invading other worlds. It's not yet clear if the metropole itself is here in Throne, or if the natives of one of these connected worlds emerged and conquered Throne before expanding their reach into the many other realms accessible through it.

Granted, there could also be multiple competing empires. A divided Throne, with different conquerors pushing outward against each other from their own worlds' gates? Also possible.

The angel explains that the Key of Kings she's been implanted with is an artifact of great power, and that someone doubtlessly shoved it into her head to hide it. The "old law" that the angel enforces dictates that he bring her back to the concordant knights' headquarters, where other angels will kill her and take the key. However, he'd rather not let that happen (he claims that this is because he doesn't want his kind getting ahold of the key, rather than any concern for the girl's wellbeing. He may or may not be hiding a softer side behind those more pragmatic motives). So, he's still working for the angels as a faction, but he's a dissenter with regards to at least some of their policies, and is willing to act on that dissent.

It's starting to sound to me like the angels are the ones running this interdimensional empire, and while this concordant knight is eager to keep the peace and enforce the law within their territory (and wishes they'd outlaw slavery so he could enforce that law too), he's against further violent expansion. The Key, judging by its name, probably allows access to another undespoiled world ripe for conquest. I could be totally wrong, of course, but that's just the vibe I'm getting at this point.

So, as an alternative to giving the Combine access to some poor world's Xen Portal, the angel offers to surreptitiously bring Keyhead (I really hope these characters get names eventually...) to someone he knows who might be able to get it out of her nonlethally. Said individual is, unfortunately, a "devil" (whatever that actually means in this setting), and the leader of a massive slaving cartel. Not someone he'd rather deal with, but he claims that there's probably no other way. And, being told that, she has no choice to agree. Time to go meet a slaver with magic surgery powers!

Before leaving, Keyhead asks the angel for his name, and he gives it as "82 White Chains Born In Emptiness Return To Subdue Evil." That's a mouthful, but I'm guessing 82 is fine for short. 82 then feeds Keyhead some "blue devil liquor" (when she asks what it is, he explains that it is liquor from a blue devil) and takes her to catch what he refers to as a bus.

I was unsure at first if the bus was the giant metal golem head, or the wooden platform thing hanging off of it. Turns out it's the former; they board one of the scaffolds attached to the colossus, and it begins marching toward the next station with them and an assortment of other creatures hanging off of it.

I get the impression that these giant golems aren't purpose-made for transportation so much as some other ancient automated part of Throne on a repeating movement cycle that the current society has just learned to take advantage of.

...

By the way, the art has been SO much better ever since we left Earth and entered Throne. Not because the artist's skill has suddenly increased, I don't think, so much as this rough, semi-grotesque style is just much more fitting for a decapitated and grimy world of demons and monsters than it is for a mundane college drama.

...

82 notices a familiar cyborg bat demon riding the "bus" with them, and tells Keyhead to just wait a moment while he talks with him. In the meantime, her horns should be growing in nicely; don't worry, they'll fall off eventually.

I guess he needs to disguise her as a devil wherever they're going, and drinking blue devil liquor will temporarily make you look like one. Okay then.

82 accosts the little cyborg devil dude, who babbles and squeaks that he didn't do anything. 82 tells him that he wants to know if someone named Ciocie is still in the place he last knew, but the devil tells him (in an awkward dialect that I guess might be normal for devils) that she doesn't want 82 bothering her and that he refuses to tell 82 anything.

Then 82 asks about the drugs he's got on him. The cyberdevil claims they're all perfectly legal drugs. However...

ACAB

When 82 threatens to banish him into the void for improper drug handling in accordance with the Old Laws, the devil tells him that he can find Ciocie in "Hell 71." There are a lot of hells, I guess. 82 tells the red cyberdevil that he's still going to banish him to the void someday, so he'd better watch out for him in the future. When the devil asks what he's doing with that odd-looking current companion of his, 82 simply explains that she "is a stranger, perhaps with a stranger story to tell." Thus prompted, she tells her story.

Isn't she a horny one? Dohohoho.​

Legit.

After letting the real devil run away, 82 uses the rest of their "bus" ride to explain some things to the fake devil. When he saw her embedded key, he thought she was a type of sorcerer called a Vatra. Most, but not all, vatras apparently work for the major demon lords. When he asks her which world she's from, and she answers Earth, he tells her that there are seven hundred thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven alternate universes linked to Throne, and fully half of them have a version of Earth. If she's not able to specify which Earth she's from, then that means that her universe is a totally uncontacted one, which makes her being given a Key all the more inexplicable.

Also, he tells her that ignorance the magnitude of hers might as well be a crime out here. She's not exactly gracious about being told this, as you might imagine. Also also, her name is Allison, which means I don't have to keep calling her Keyhead. Progress!

So, some actual setting orientation info now. As 82 said before, Throne is the former home of a multiversal creator god, and back when he lived here it was also called Heaven. Since God's disappearance, this once-paradisaical hub world has fallen into ruin and decay, and is currently ruled by an unstable oligarchy of seven demonic warlords. Okay, that's who the vatra sorcerers work for. The seven black kings hunger incessantly for wealth, and for human flesh, with the human-inhabited worlds of the 777,777 universes often being conquered to feed the fires. So, I was sort of right about their being competing interdimensional empires, but also sort of wrong in that there's an uneasy peace between them.

I was also dead wrong about the angels. The seven black kings theoretically rule Throne along with many of the mortal worlds hanging from it, but in practice they have no interest in governing a decaying, resource-less urban jungle. They just base themselves here in order to better secure the portals to the mortal universes that they've invaded. The streets and giant god-statue-buildings of Throne are ruled in part by a motley of gangs, cartels, and "guilds" with varying degrees of loyalty to the black kings, and in part by the Concord of Angels. The angels have been trying to keep some vague, farcical semblance of law and justice in Throne, and their intrustions are somewhat still tolerated by the guilds and black kings, but that semblance has been getting steadily vaguer and more farcical for a long time.

Angels are a grandfathered-in remnant of the old regime that no one was quite willing to go through the trouble of getting rid of, basically. Concessions are made to them, but angelic power and influence are waning.

And, going by 82's earlier comments on what his peers might do if he brought Allison to them, the old regime might also have not have been all that great to begin with. Or, at least, the angels have started to become corrupt and/or desperate in their methods as things continue to get worse.

Looks like an instance of the "divine post-apocalypse" fantasy subgenre, and one of the more hopeless ones out there. It's a type of fantasy setting I'm rather fond of, so assuming the worldbuilding is good enough in the details to bear this out I imagine I could end up really liking this 'verse.

There's a big map of Throne here, but it would be unreadable at this resolution if I copypasted it. The gist of it is that Throne is a circular floating island in the void, with water flowing out from the towering "red city" at its center and running around the various other urban districts before waterfalling off the edges into nothingness. That water used to have healing properties before it got all polluted. There's a bunch of landmarks with names that mean nothing to me at this point, like the "conclave of the demiurgi" and "tower of Zoss" at the top of the raised Red City, but some others, like the Angel Concordance headquarters and the palaces of the seven black kings (whose names include Mammon, Gog-Magog, and other biblical demons), do mean things. The population of Throne is given at around eight hundred million, which is more than the United States but less than China. Given that Throne is pretty much all city, I think we can take that to mean that it's physically rather small. Also, apparently at least many of these "statues" that have been hollowed out and turned into buildings are actually the petrified corpses of titanic, long-dead gods.

The "bus" is a zombified one, maybe? That would make sense.

Allison next asks about angels and devils. 82 begins with the former.

Angels are native to the void, apparently. So, are they not creations of the original God, then? Interesting. Also, they normally look like the more abstract wheel eyeball wing creatures from the weirder parts of the bible in their native environment, and they have humans to thank for their physical avatar bodies.

Well THAT'S surprising. Humans have been in Throne for a very long time, it seems, and have had a surprisingly large impact in this multiversal hub of gods and demons. Wonder where they all went, in that case? Most of the citizens of Throne don't look particularly human.

...although, hmm. 82 uses the word "mankind" here. And only half of the universes have a version of Earth in them. So, maybe he's using "mankind" as a general term for intelligent mortal species? Maybe most of the people here are aliens from worlds similar-ish to our own, with the actual devils and angels and things being a minority? That would fit.

He also says that men and angels both have souls made from some kind of primordial divine fire (hmm, very Dark Souls...), but that the main difference between them is that for mankind, the body and the soul are one and the same. Which implies that there's no afterlife. There are angels, demons, and a heaven that's been turned into a hell, but no ghosts or afterlife realms as far as anyone knows. Interesting.

On to devils now. Are they the same thing as demons? Are we gonna have to kill six billion of these guys? Unclear. Devil souls are made of a different kind of fire; a kind that consumes but produces no light. Like angels, they are capable of existing as funky-looking spirits and of inhabiting synthetic avatars. Angels were given their synth bodies to help them run Throne more effectively. Devils were given theirs by more ill-intentioned mortals in exchange for personal power or arcane knowledge.

Then there's this tidbit:

First of all, holy fuck did Allison take the words out of my mouth. 82's account seems to be skipping around through cosmic history, and he didn't start at the beginning, so even for me reading this comfortably from behind a screen it's hard to understand everything. In Allison's place, I doubt just about anything would have penetrated. 82 is not good at explaining things, which I suppose fits his generally rough and prickly personality.

Second of all...so, mortals banished the angels from Thone once after starting their dealings with the devils, but then begged for them to come back and gave them new synth bodies to make them stronger than ever. I have a hunch that in between those two dates, the thing that caused Throne to fall into ruin (assuming that isn't just from being abandoned by God) and led to the eventual rise of the seven black kings happened. Going by their names, the seven kings are likely devils themselves, so yeah, that would fit.

Next, 82 goes further back in the timeline and gives us a creation myth. Holy fuck is this exposition front-loaded. So, the original creator God was indeed YISUN, from those bizarro-Psalms. Yisun was both real and not real, existant and nonexistant, a god of paradoxes and intellectual frustration. Fittingly, he's depicted in a JoJo pose.

Reality as we know it began when he created disparity by cutting himself in half, birthing a taijitu of lesser gods named Yis and Un.

Yis and Un took one look at each other, and then promptly tried to kill one another. The battle lasted for seven years, with no victor. Then, since that apparently wasn't working, they hatefucked for seven hours. This led to the birth of seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy lesser gods. I get that the number seven is a big deal in Judeo-Christian mysticism, but this is just getting ridiculous. Yis and Un...it's not clear what exactly happened to them, but birthing the army of gods seems to have divided the power they each inherited from Yisun and thus reduced their importance at the very least. Anyway, the new pantheon raised the Red City for themselves in the middle of Throne (that's what that "conclave of demiurges" is all about, I imagine. Demiurge in the Platonic rather than Gnostic sense, here), and created the "four races of inheritors" to tend to their works. Whoever or whatever those are. Finally, each god stood somewhere on the outer field of Throne and stared out into the void beyond its rim, and created a universe of its own.

They put all of their life force into their new creations, just as Yisun put his into Yis and Un, and Yis and Un (maybe?) put theirs into their children. They left dead, mountain-sized corpses behind in Throne as each one of them Brahma'd themselves into a universe's worth of mortals.

It's all been downhill since then. The house of the gods is abandoned, and the cockroaches have taken it over. That's...kind of a disturbing metaphor, coming from an iron-fisted robocop.

Anyway, this is where the undead god bus arrives at their station, and 82 and Allison dismount. Allison's head still reeling, and mine as well tbh.

Don't feed the dead. Guess there is an afterlife after all, and it involves no one feeding you.


Damn, am I really just a third of the way through this volume? I'll try and do an extra long post tomorrow and fit all the rest of it in so that I can actually get the damned queue moving again. Hopefully it'll go faster now that the extremely dense and confusing exposition is at least MOSTLY out of the way.