Chapter 314
Chapter 314
He controlled space.
Dozens of Authorities reclaimed from his brothers were unleashed all at once.
Within the confined area, time was rewound again and again.
CRUNCH!
He destroyed the first interlocking gear.
CLATTER— CLATTER—
Even after one shattered, the gears continued turning, until at last they ground to a halt.
That was only the beginning.
CRACK!
Next, the hourglass he destroyed spilled its sand.
SHHHHH.
A water clock formed from a great sea.
FWOOSH—
A sundial created by manifesting The Sun itself.
SSSSSS—
A clock based on a redefined concept of time, capable of moving through infinitesimal units.
One by one, clocks of countless forms were dismantled.
Cronis's form, which had shifted from old man to young man, from boy to child, gradually became fixed.
And then.
CRASH!
[Khak…….]
Unable to divert the spatial shockwave, the old man's body was hurled across the ground.
[You truly are my brother.]
Lord looked down at Cronis, who could no longer rewind time.
[That might have been dangerous if I had not kept some higher Authorities hidden.]
He quietly praised his brother's full strength.
Time had been the first Authority Lord had ever separated from himself.
Special even among the high-ranking Gods, Cronis had understood ‘Time’ beyond its original bounds and expanded it.
His claim to be the strongest of the brothers had been no boast.
He was the brother who had spent more time than any other and had been the first to ease Lord's emptiness.
[I will remember you.]
SQUELCH!
Lord's hand pierced Cronis's body.
WHOOOOOM—
The greatest divinity Lord had ever separated was drawn into him.
His Divine Power, equivalent to that of dozens of Gods he had devoured in the Divine Realm, began recovering.
[…….]
Then Lord suddenly noticed something strange.
Time around him was slowing.
By the time his Divine Power had fully recovered, time itself seemed to move according to his will.
Only then did he understand.
Cronis had used his own divinity to complete a Formula.
[So when you said you saw the future, this was the petty trick you prepared.]
The Formula contained more than Cronis's Authority.
It was a masterpiece created together by at least three high-ranking Gods.
The laws of the world had acted against Lord merely for planning to harm a high-ranking God.
Cronis had fought despite knowing he would lose, and in the end had deliberately forced Lord to devour him.
‘Using ‘Time’ in my current state would be no different from detonating a time bomb planted inside my body.’
[I will not be able to use ‘Time’ for a while.]
If Time had remained available, his future plans would have been much easier.
Even so, it was only a matter of time.
Every Authority possessed by the divinities had originated from him.
In the end, they would return to him and reclaim their rightful place.
As time passed, Cronis's intentions became clearer.
The laws had grown stronger.
Now merely appearing before the Gods subjected Lord to their influence.
Simply stepping forward caused degradation equivalent to one Authority.
[Cronis. What a troublesome thing you have done…….]
He had no choice but to alter his plan.
[So that is why you came to me.]
The Anomaly greeted Lord, who looked somewhat haggard after taking Time and suffering the laws' sanctions.
[Do you not possess one of my Authorities as well?]
The Anomaly had originally been an outer being.
But it had accepted Radiance and the Curses that once belonged to Lord.
Neither entirely outside nor entirely inside.
[An existence beyond the laws of the world.]
If Lord reclaimed the Authority by devouring it, the laws acting upon him would change as well.
[An amusing idea. And one thing is true.]
RIIIP—
The Anomaly created the jaws of ‘Devouring,’ one of Lord's Authorities.
[But that applies to me as well.]
[You imitated it with the Curses?]
A faint smile touched Lord's lips.
He no longer showed any displeasure.
He did not dislike resistance of this kind.
[After coming into contact with you, I became a truly interesting existence.]
Authorities poured from Lord's body.
His battle instincts had been honed to a razor's edge while fighting Cronis.
[Anomaly. You too will become part of me.]
The existence that had come from outside—
and the Existence Force and Authorities of the one trying to go from inside to outside—
intermingled.
And so.
CRUNCH!
Lord finally devoured the Anomaly.
[…….]
No unknown information suddenly flowed into his mind.
That was unfortunate.
The knowledge the creature possessed would have been a tremendous help in reaching the Abyss and going outside.
[Things in this world rarely proceed exactly according to plan.]
Lord accepted that quickly and assessed the changes in himself.
By devouring the Anomaly, he reclaimed Radiance and the Curses.
His Divine Power had increased no less than when he devoured Cronis.
He could say with certainty that even if every remaining God joined forces, none would be his match.
When he stepped back into the world, the laws that had once pressed down on him like a crushing weight felt noticeably lighter.
Even harboring the impure thought of devouring the high-ranking Gods—
[Oh? Lord?]
—or partially manifesting before another God had become possible.
The drawback was equally obvious.
[What brings you here?]
[…….]
Directly devouring them was still difficult.
Unless he reclaimed the divinities, he could not return to his original, complete state.
The Anomaly had told him this.
His essence was that of an existence from the Abyss beyond the Boundary.
‘An existence in which the possibilities of the Upper Realm and the Lower Realm have merged, destined to return to the Abyss and become the seed of a Constellation.’
He had been chosen.
[I must go outside and become a Constellation.]
He had to return to the Abyss, go beyond, and protect the world in its current form.
It would be both punishment and duty for having created this situation out of nothing more than boredom.
For now, he did not need to reclaim ‘Boundary’ or ‘Barrier.’
They too were existences that would fade with time.
What he needed immediately was—
[Encroachment.]
He sought out Neptune.
A sea vast enough to rival the Continent itself.
The high-ranking God who reigned over it was notorious for his eccentricities.
[I did not know you had a hobby of turning into lesser creatures.]
[I tried imitating the curiosity of the ruler of this domain.]
[Imitation? What an insolent approach.]
[What brings you all the way here?]
[You look bored.]
[Boredom. That too is something a God must endure.]
[You seem angry with me. Is it because I dealt with Adamas?]
[…….]
He neither welcomed nor opposed Lord.
Neptune alleviated his boredom by immersing himself in experiments of his own.
Lord recognized a familiar emotion in his eyes.
An emotion no one but Lord would have been able to read.
Emptiness.
[I knew you had taken an interest in that man.]
[And yet you gave me no time.]
[You are special, Neptune.]
Neptune was a fragment that had carried away part of Lord's emptiness when Lord separated his Authority from himself.
His experiments using lesser beings were likely no different from Lord's own acts of creating them.
Perhaps Lord had avoided visiting him as often as the other Gods because Neptune reminded him too strongly of his former self.
But things were different now.
[Do you say that to the other high-ranking Gods as well?]
[Who knows?]
[That human was only the beginning.]
[If this is about mutations, spare me.]
[Then I will tell you why I came today. It concerns the Boundary.]
[…….]
[Just as I warned all of you not to approach it, even I cannot enter that place.]
[And?]
[Not long ago, a guest came from beyond the Boundary.]
Lord told Neptune about the Abyss.
He explained that many beings comparable to themselves and other Transcendents existed there.
He omitted the Anomaly and the Constellations.
[Oh?]
Just as Lord once had, Neptune showed interest in something new.
[A mutation. Is it a Transcendent like us?]
[Styx and Murus are doing their utmost, but……. The flow changed after the previous incident. It seems even they cannot block it completely.]
Lord opened his hand.
[The Abyss must not yet be connected to this place.]
A power that should originally have belonged to the Gods, but whose nature had now changed from Divine Power.
A handful of Radiance shone above Lord's palm.
[After that creature appeared, we Gods came under threat. Before long, the world ruled by Gods will collapse.]
[Contact with an existence from the Abyss causes that?]
[…….]
[Lord, your divinity is no longer what it once was.]
His Divine Power had grown incomparably greater than before.
[As you are now, you are too contaminated to be called the same kind of divinity as us.]
Contamination.
It was a word ill suited to one who had once possessed Radiance more brilliant than anyone else's.
Even so, Lord did not deny it.
Neptune too had taken away a large fragment of Lord's primordial divinity.
He could not perceive Lord's thoughts, but because he could genuinely feel the same emptiness, he could read him in other ways.
[In that respect, I found much in your experiments worth studying. No—in truth, I was impressed.]
[There is a limit to how far one can evade the laws of the world by such means. I doubt you are unaware of that.]
Of course he was not.
[If the laws of the world have begun to change, I need only secure an advantageous position before the new laws fully settle.]
Everything had happened because of his boredom, and Cronis's unexpected action had forced him to devour the Anomaly sooner than planned.
[I intend to divide my power among lesser beings as well.]
Time, once his own, was no longer on his side.
From now on, he could only continue forward.
[Someday, a Demigod bearing my name will come to find you.]
If Neptune still retained his divinity when that day came—
[Hear him out at least once.]
Neptune had immediately noticed that Lord's aura was different from before, but—
‘A mutation inheriting Lord's Divine Power…….’
interest gleamed in Neptune's eyes.
[Very well.]
After meeting Neptune, Lord created the Monster Lord.
The Monster Lord, even after being given the Anomaly's power, was defeated by Edan Eurasia.
Lord was deeply disappointed.
Then he created the Emperor.
But he too would fall to the destiny Adamas had altered.
In the end—
[I will be the one to deal with Adamas.]
The time that had stopped began to flow again.
[Would you not agree, Cronis?]
As time passed, the Gods declined and returned to the Primordial.
***
“…….”
The memory ended.
“What are you?”
Killian asked.
[I am an impurity.]
Just before Lord left the world after devouring the Anomaly—
[A part that was not permitted.]
“…….”
Impurity was somewhat of an exaggeration.
He was the part of Lord that remained uncontaminated, with only a fragment of the beginning still left within him.
The being speaking with Killian was neither the Anomaly nor Lord.
‘Lord's purity.’
Beyond the Boundary, as they called it.
And the meaning of the outside.
As the world's capacity expanded, true Transcendents became capable of being born.
“You are not an impurity.”
[Purity……. Yes. From your perspective, I suppose you could see me that way.]
This was only one of countless Middle Realms.
The Lord of the beginning had merely been an existence born with the greatest potential.
[Potential does not always lead to the correct ending. Just as with the traces of Cronis you encountered.]
Cronis had looked into the future and prepared countless contingencies.
Killian's entry into the Makeshift Boundary and refinement of a 9-Star Hollyheart.
The revelation Cronis gave to the Pope, his Apostle.
And—
[Even when the Lord fused with the Anomaly and eventually reclaimed every Authority.]
The purity that had, however briefly, become part of the Anomaly told him of another world it had glimpsed.
A pure future that the original Lord might have become.
But not anymore.
[Lord will destroy everything.]
Just as his brothers had once toyed with mortals in ancient times.
[The world as it exists now no longer means anything to him.]
The one who still used the name Lord cared about only one thing.
[The War of Constellations. Going outside.]
That had been the purpose behind every great war waged across the world.
To give birth to someone with the Existence Force of a Constellation, enough blood had to be spilled to bring an entire world to ruin.
The mountains and the Continent had both been soaked in blood by the wars caused by the Monster Lord and the Emperor.
[I want you to take the contaminated Lord's place.]
The Lord of the beginning—
the being once called the Primordial—
spoke.
RelatedRelatedRelated