Immortal Paladin

486 God Emperor

I fell for it. completely.

I hadn’t expected the Origin King to pull out an LLO item, let alone something like the Ring of Dark Banishment. That kind of artifact wasn’t just rare; it was the kind of thing entire eras were built around. And now, because of that single miscalculation, I was trapped… suspended in an endless, suffocating void.

Just darkness, everywhere.

I ignited my Ophanim. The countless rings within my pupils spun violently, fractal halos grinding against one another as they attempted to dissect the abyss around me. Threads of perception stretched outward, probing, tearing, and demanding form from the nothingness.

“Okay, I could do that, or maybe that, or even that… But it takes too long…”

My preparations had been meticulous with layers upon layers of contingencies crafted specifically to counter the Origin King’s Origin Art. But this? This wasn’t his power. This was something external.

He got me good.

“I guess there’s no helping it. I have to risk it, huh?”

My voice barely echoed, swallowed almost instantly by the void. With a flick of thought, I reached into my pocket dimension and pulled out a weathered tome, the Records of the Age of Divinity, authored by the Enlightened Scholar.

I flipped it open from the back.

Of course, I wasn’t reading it like this because I’d lost my mind. The more recent the entries, the closer they were to the truth of the present… or the near future. Efficiency mattered.

I began reading and each word burned. Quintessence drained steadily from my being as the knowledge forced itself into me, but… no Heavenly Tribulation descended. No backlash. No cosmic correction.

“Interesting.”

I waited a few seconds longer, letting the silence confirm it. Nothing came. I wondered, briefly, how the others were faring. The “strategy” forming in my mind… they could attempt it too, but the efficiency would be abysmal compared to me doing it.

I turned another page.

The Enlightened Scholar began detailing the Six Supremes.

My focus narrowed onto one in particular, the Supreme Death, sovereign of the Underworld.

The text shifted, the ink seeming almost alive as it carved meaning directly into my consciousness:

“He descended not as a ruler, but as a calamity. The Underworld, in its layered infinity, rejected him, until he rejected it in turn. One layer, vast beyond mortal comprehension, was erased beneath his hand.

“The remnants of that annihilation became his throne.

“From there, he waged a war of inevitability. The denizens of the Underworld, ancient wardens and forgotten sovereigns alike, fell not to strategy, but to certainty. Death does not bargain, but merely does what he does best.

“Thus, he came to rule.”

My Ophanim slowed, just slightly.

The implications alone were… excessive.

I continued.

“As the alliance of the Six Supremes solidified, their dominion expanded without resistance that mattered. In contrast, the Lost Gods waned. They were fractured, hunted, and diminished with each passing era.

“Among the Supremes, none bore hatred as purely as the Sovereign of Death toward the Shén.

“At the mere whisper of their existence, he would descend. Worlds would dim. Civilizations would vanish. Entire realities were stripped of continuity in his pursuit.

“The remnants of these fallen worlds did not fade. They gathered, drawn into the construction of a greater design.

“The Hollowed World.”

My grip on the journal tightened.

“A prison not merely of space, but of inevitability. There, the Shén and the Lost Gods would be cast, alongside the Supreme Void, bound within a reality assembled from the corpses of those who once harbored them.”

“…So that’s how it came to be.”

The Enlightened Scholar, huh? If these words were written in the past, then his sight extended far beyond simple foresight. Or perhaps… he had already seen the end. I exhaled slowly and turned the page.

Another passage surfaced.

“Not all among the Shén resisted in unity.

“Meng Po, Keeper of the Veil Between Memory and Oblivion, chose neutrality. Where others raged or fled, she remained, anchored to her duty.

“The Supreme Death sought her as he did all others.

“Their encounter did not conclude in annihilation.

“For once, Death was stayed.

“The remaining Supreme Beings intervened not out of mercy, but necessity. Meng Po’s existence upheld the fragile equilibrium of the Six Realms. Without her, the cycle would fracture, and even the Supremes would inherit the consequences.

“Thus, she was spared.”

I blinked. That… was new. Meng Po held that level of importance? For the Supremes themselves to intervene… I kept reading. The strain began to accumulate. My Ophanim spun faster, but this time, not in control as my vision blurred at the edges. A dull pressure built behind my eyes.

I raised a hand, brushing beneath my nose.

“…Figures.”

It was blood, dripping from my nose.

“Blessed Regeneration.”

Warmth spread instantly through my body, knitting the damage, and stabilizing the overload. The bleeding stopped, the pressure eased, and the heavens answered.

A Heavenly Tribulation manifested without warning.

A bolt of condensed judgment tore through the void and struck me directly.

There was no time to react.

Light consumed everything.

—

In the next instant, the darkness shattered. I stood once more on Losten. The journal vanished back into my pocket dimension as if it had never left. The air here was thick, burning with energy and saturated with violence.

The battlefield had already devolved into chaos.

On one side, the Origin King stood against our strongest fighters, his presence distorting the space around him as clashes of impossible scale erupted with each exchange. They were quite blurry in vision, showing me there fight had brought them quite far back from here.

On the other hand, Guardians and players from my world were locked in brutal combat against his army. Waves of the Origin King’s army surged toward a massive dome suspended beneath the flying city of New Risendawn.

Above the dome, the city hovered like a silent overseer.

Within the dome, the tree pulsed, spewing out endless forces from the Hollowed World.

I caught sight of Ru Qiu.

He was… laughing.

Completely immersed in the fight, he moved like a storm given form, clashing against four of the Origin King’s strongest warriors simultaneously.

All of them were women, and incredibly powerful.

And from the look on Ru Qiu’s face, he was enjoying every second of it.

*BOOM!

I looked up, the fight beginning to escalate into the skies.

Above me, the skies churned with motion. Flyers from the Origin King’s army filled with beasts, cultivators riding blades, and living constructs stitched from bone and metal swarmed upward in relentless waves, all converging toward New Risendawn. Their intent was obvious. Break the city, collapse the dome, and sever the source of our counter-offensive.

But they weren’t unopposed.

Encircling the flying city, our ships held formation like an iron halo. Massive hulls bristling with cannons and spell arrays fired in synchronized volleys, filling the sky with streaks of light and cascading detonations. Defensive barriers shimmered and flexed under impact, while interceptors broke off from formation to meet the incoming flyers head-on. Every collision painted the air with fire and falling bodies.

The dome beneath the city pulsed steadily, anchoring everything together. Inside, the tree continued its work, its twisted branches tearing open reality in controlled bursts, flooding the battlefield with forces from the Hollowed World.

This… all of this… had only been possible because of a gamble.

Dave’s party had been the ones to find it, a hidden dungeon buried so deeply it may as well have been erased from existence. Joan and Gu Jie had taken that foundation and twisted it into something usable, something dangerous, refining it with Alice’s planar spellwork until it became a bridge.

The rest had followed.

They smuggled a branch of the World Tree from the Hollowed World and nurtured it in secrecy here, letting it grow into something capable of anchoring a pathway between realities. They didn’t activate it immediately. They waited, building it up, disguising its presence, preparing for the exact moment it would matter most.

And now it was open.

Now it was flooding the battlefield.

The Origin King had responded exactly as expected, by bringing everything. His forces stretched across the horizon, an endless tide of cultivators, warbeasts, and entities that didn’t originally belong here. Their numbers were so vast that even their own logistics had to be straining under the weight.

But we weren’t facing them empty-handed.

We had an entire city in the sky.

And a doorway to a prison-realm built from the corpses of worlds.

Honestly, I’m tempted to join in, but I got bigger fish to fry.

I exhaled slowly, steadying myself as I took it all in. Then I spoke.

“Starshroud, you ready?”

The armor responded instantly, her voice echoing in my mind with a childish lilt that felt almost out of place in the middle of all this destruction.

“Ready! This time we won’t get stuck in something weird again! That darkness thing was stupid!”

A faint smirk tugged at my lips.

“Fair enough.”

My senses extended toward the portal beneath the city. I could feel the qi attempting to seep through, slipping into this world like a cautious tide. But the moment it entered, it was devoured and dissipated into nothing before it could gather.

There wasn’t enough.

Not even close.

It felt like a faint breeze brushing against my skin before vanishing entirely.

I hadn’t expected qi to function here at all, but Gu Jie and Joan had been precise in their calculations. Just enough leakage to stabilize the connection. Not enough to empower anyone.

If that balance tipped…

I glanced at the enemy forces again, at the cultivators woven throughout their ranks.

If qi became active in this world, even slightly more than this, the consequences would be immediate. Their techniques, their movement arts, their destructive capabilities? All of it would surge. New Risendawn wouldn’t last long under that kind of pressure.

Before I could dwell further, Starshroud’s presence surged as she finished her preparations.

“Supreme Bearer’s Pact!”

Power flooded into me.

It wasn’t gradual. It wasn’t controlled. It was a violent, overwhelming ascent as something ancient and eldritch bled through the armor and into my being. My muscles tightened, my senses sharpened, and the world itself seemed to shrink slightly in response to the pressure radiating from me.

My cape, Dark Veil, came alive.

It lashed outward like a living entity, tendrils snapping through the air, distorting space as they moved. It reacted to my thoughts before I fully formed them, eager, predatory.

I drew in a breath and reached deeper.

There was something new and something I had only recently grasped, a concept born from necessity when facing the looming threat of total annihilation. Archelon and Seraphae had guided me through it, but the execution… that was mine.

“Legacy Art: God Emperor.”

The transformation was immediate.

My armor inverted, darkness giving way to brilliance as white and gold overtook every surface. Radiance spilled outward, pushing back the chaos around me. For a moment, it reminded me of my battle with Feng Wei, when I have to project vanity and used quintessence to create a flashy armor.

This wasn’t like that.

This felt closer to Six Paths Unity… to Sage.

But even that comparison fell short.

And I wasn’t done.

I raised my hand slightly, my voice steady as I began layering power upon power.

“Holy Wrath.”

Heat coiled within my limbs, sharpening every motion into something destructive as azure feathers lit up below me and floated upwards.

“Blessed Armor.”

My armaments resonated, their existence elevated beyond their base form.

“Bless.”

A subtle but pervasive enhancement settled over me, reinforcing everything at once.

“Lion’s Courage.”

Fear became irrelevant. Hesitation ceased to exist.

“Armor of the Indomitable.”

My defenses hardened, my body refusing the concept of collapse.

“Sacred Bulwark.”

A barrier of reflection formed, unseen yet absolute.

“Shield of the Eternal.”

Durability layered upon durability, stacking into something oppressive.

“Divine Word: Life.”

Vitality surged, my existence anchoring itself more firmly into reality.

“Holy Aura.”

The air around me thickened, my presence pressing outward like a domain.

I continued without pause.

“Radiant Ascension.”

“Judgment Flame.”

“Crown of Valor.”

“Aegis of the First Light.”

“Sanctified Dominion.”

Each spell stacked, intertwined, amplified by everything that came before it. Power compounded into something excessive, something that should have been unstable, but wasn’t. It was because I was holding it together.

The ground beneath me fractured.

The air trembled.

Light began to spill from my form into a torrent. Gold, pure and overwhelming, poured upward like a pillar, tearing through the battlefield’s chaos as it surged toward the heavens.

Everything around me reacted.

The mere presence of that radiance forced space to acknowledge it.

I reached into my pocket dimension and pulled them out without hesitation—Silver Steel in one hand, Soulsunderer in the other. The familiar weight settled instantly, grounding me as I activated Monkey Grip, forcing both weapons into perfect synchronization despite their size and nature.

The battlefield noticed.

The Origin King’s army reacted the moment my power spiked. Spells ignited across the horizon, arrays locked onto me, and war machines adjusted their aim in unison. A storm of projectiles followed with beams of condensed energy, spiraling lances of qi, explosive shells that distorted space as they traveled.

They never reached me.

A golden barrier unfolded in front of me, absolute and unwavering, swallowing the barrage in a cascade of harmless detonations.

Ezekiel stood there.

He didn’t even glance back at me at first, his expression calm as the last remnants of the attacks faded against his defense. Then, slightly turning his head, he spoke.

“My lord. Lady Alice has a message for you.”

In the distance, the world tore itself apart.

A massive explosion erupted across the mountains, the force of it rippling outward even from where I stood. The earth cracked, tremors spreading like fractures through reality itself. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out the details, but it was too far. The scale of that clash alone told me enough.

They had moved the fight there on purpose, with the intention of containment and keeping that level of destruction away from the main battlefield.

Ezekiel didn’t wait. “She said hurry the fuck up.”

“…Straight to the point.” I exhaled, rolling my shoulders slightly as I adjusted my grip on my weapons. “Yeah, yeah. I’m on it.”

My mind flickered back briefly to the void to the journal. Using the Heavenly Tribulation as an exit was reckless, but effective. The Ophanim had shown me alternatives, cleaner paths with less risk attached.

I hadn’t taken them.

Fastest route wins at the moment.

Though, judging by the way the sky above me churned, I hadn’t gotten away clean.

Dark clouds spiraled overhead, thick and suffocating, veins of lightning crawling through them like something alive. The pressure descended almost immediately, locking onto me with unmistakable intent.

“…Right on schedule.”

I tilted my head slightly, Ophanim spinning as I extended my perception outward. Through my own vision and the fragments relayed by the remaining Ezekiels accompanying Alice’s team, I saw the state of that battle.

It was bad.

The memories flowing through Ezekiel confirmed it. Several of them had already died, multiple times, burning through whatever mechanisms kept them returning. Each revival chipped away at something fundamental.

They were buying time, barely.

“I figured as much…”

My gaze shifted again, catching Ru Qiu in the chaos. His earlier enthusiasm had dulled into something harsher. He was still fighting, still pushing forward, but the pressure had mounted.

Four opponents.

A hellspawn radiating infernal corruption.

A heavenly being cloaked in oppressive light.

A beastfolk whose movements blurred with primal ferocity.

And an asura-like entity, all rage and relentless assault.

Even for him, that was excessive.

I reached out and placed a hand on Ezekiel’s shoulder. Power surged again as I layered the same enhancements onto him, one after another, reinforcing his already formidable presence.

“Go help Ru Qiu. He’ll last longer with you there.”

I didn’t wait for confirmation.

My focus snapped toward Alice’s position, her presence flickering on the edge of collapse as something massive closed in on her.

“Castling.”

Space twisted.

In an instant, I swapped places with her.

The transition was seamless.

I arrived just in time to intercept a killing blow aimed straight for her neck. Silver Steel rose, catching the attack with a resounding impact that split the air apart. The force drove into me, but I held firm.

At the same time, Soulsunderer came down.

The single-edged blade burned with Searing Smite, golden fire cascading along its length as it carved downward with absolute intent. The strike connected, and the mountains responded with flames spreading outward, illuminating the frost that clung to the peaks in a violent clash of elements.

I stepped forward, closing the distance completely.

My foot came down hard, pinning his.

“Got you.”

Without pause, I cast Halo of Restriction.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Golden rings slammed into place around him, compressing, binding, restricting every vector of movement I could define.

“Righteous Challenge.”

A chain of radiant gold erupted between us, snapping taut as it connected his chest to mine, anchoring him to me with absolute authority.

The heavens answered.

Lightning descended.

A pillar of pure, unfiltered tribulation crashed down, engulfing both of us in its fury. The world vanished in white and gold as the judgment of the sky tore into everything within its reach.

Through the chaos, I spoke through Qi Speech, my will cutting through the battlefield.

“Everyone, disengage and fall back. Leave him to me.”

I could feel them hesitate, but not for long as they heeded my words.

The Origin King stood before me, his expression twisted in irritation. His teeth were clenched, his gaze locked onto mine as the lightning consumed us.

And yet, it barely affected him.

“…Of course.”

The second strike came even faster than the first.

Another pillar descended, wider, more violent, swallowing us whole once more. The ground beneath us shattered further, unable to withstand the repeated impact.

Under the storm of tribulation, he moved.

A sharp stomp broke the pin on his foot, forcing space itself to give way as he stepped back, disengaging just enough to reset the distance.

I didn’t let him.

Divine Speed.

Zealot’s Stride.

Flash Step.

I closed the gap instantly, matching him step for step, refusing to let the chain slacken. The lightning didn’t stop. If anything, it intensified. Each strike layered over the last, turning the entire battlefield into a storm of judgment centered entirely on us.

I laughed, screaming to his ears,

“Hope you didn’t miss me too much.”