Booooooooooom!
The space above the planet detonated violently. A colossal, thunderous explosion ripped through the upper atmosphere, shaking the heavens themselves. The shockwave spread like a tidal wave across the sky, so overwhelming that every creature in that entire quarter of the planet instinctively lifted its head and stared upward. For a brief mont they forgot their original fear, forgot the invisible terror driving them to flee across the surface.
What replaced it was sothing far deeper.
A fear that struck directly at their instincts. Whoosh!
Damir shot backward like a launched projectile, his body propelled away by the violent force of the impact. His figure streaked through the thin atmosphere, leaving ripples through the surrounding space. Yet only a mont later he forced himself to stabilize, regaining control of his body mid-flight before finally coming to an abrupt stop far away from the original point of impact. Before him, one of the three enormous arrays spun violently in place. Its circular body trembled as unstable currents of energy flickered across its surface. At the instant the attack had struck, Damir had instinctively summoned that array forward to intercept the blow.
Without it, he would not have escaped unhard.
Damir glanced at his hand briefly, then shifted his gaze toward the array, quickly verifying that neither the structure nor the energy within it had
suffered any real damage. Only after confirming everything remained intact did he raise his head and glare toward Helene.
"What the hell are you doing?!" he shouted angrily. "Do you want to die that badly?!"
"And you are the one who will kill ?" Helen continued advancing without hesitation.
The heavenly laws surrounding her seed to respond to her very existence, swirling around the newly ascended Law Dominator as though welcoming her into their domain. A faint aura of destructive authority surrounded her steps, "Forget about leaving this place today."
Whoosh!
As she moved forward, Helen stabbed her finger into the air once again, her mind forming a single silent command.
(Terminal Thread!!)
A gray beam erupted instantly from her fingertip.
Zzzn!
It flashed through space like a bolt of lightning, slicing through the void itself as it streaked directly toward Damir's forehead once more.
If Sakaar had been present, he would have recognized that attack imdiately.
It was the sa terrifying strike the Shadow had once used against Nihari more than seven hundred and fifty years earlier.
"Helen!!" Damir roared with anger.
At the sa ti he pushed the defensive array slightly forward, placing it squarely between himself and the incoming strike.
"Do you truly dare fight of all people while your mind is clearly unstable?" he continued coldly. "Has the entire Helmor bloodline gone mad?!"
From the circular array hovering before him, a single black arrow shot forward at terrifying speed.
Then, in the next instant, the arrow split apart.
One beca two.
Two beca four.
Four beca eight.
Each one carried the sa cursed energy, and all of them raced toward Helen simultaneously.
Baaang!
One of the black curse arrows collided directly with the Terminal Thread.
The mont they touched, both attacks exploded violently, producing powerful shockwaves that rippled outward across the surrounding space.
Yet the remaining arrows did not slow.
They continued rushing toward Helen like a growing storm.
"...!"
Helen's brows tightened slightly as she halted her advance.
Then she stabbed her finger forward several tis in rapid succession.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
More explosions erupted across the sky as her attacks collided with the curse. arrows one after another. Each collision created violent tremors in the upper atmosphere, sending waves of energy rolling across the planet below.
Yet even after those clashes-
Whoosh!
A large number of arrows continued forward. And worse, their numbers were still increasing as they traveled.
"Hmph!"
Helen finally stopped thrusting her finger.
Her eyes suddenly ignited with a faint glow, radiating an aura of absolute
authority.
"Silent Incineration Domain."
She murmured quietly to herself.
Then sothing strange happened.
Dozens of the black curse arrows arrived at the sa mont from multiple
directions, converging upon Helen as if determined to crush her body into
nothingness.
But the instant they crossed into a radius of one hundred ters around her... every single arrow began to break apart.
Their cursed energy destabilized.
Their forms crumbled.
Their power disintegrated.
By the ti they reached ninety ters from Helen, the arrows had already
turned completely into ash.
Their remains scattered silently into the surrounding cosmic winds.
...Still standing calmly within the Silent Incineration Domain, Helen resud
walking forward toward Damir. Her movents were slow, deliberate, and
filled with quiet confidence.
"Nice array," she said calmly.
Then she lifted her head slightly, her gaze cold and steady.
"But what are you without it?"
That array... the Array of the Miserable World...
It was the very foundation behind the terrifying power of the cursed Darvion.
It was the reason he had ascended to the tenth star.
It was the reason he had accumulated an amount of negative karma that placed him among the most terrifying beings in the entire universe, perhaps even the greatest collector of such karma to ever exist.
True, Darvion had been the one who invented it.
But the truth was even simpler than that.
It was the array itself that carved his na into the history of the cosmos.
The array inflad the negative emotions of living creatures. It dragged their worst mories to the surface, tearing them from the depths of their minds and forcing them into the light, while amplifying every dark feeling hidden within their hearts. Its influence was so overwhelming that fear, panic, regret, hatred, jealousy, and despair all began to grow uncontrollably, feeding upon one another until the target's spiritual domain itself started to crumble under
the pressure.
The array did not strike directly. It did not unleash a visible attack like lightning or fire. Instead, it guided the process quietly, nudging the target step by step toward collapse, leaving them to destroy themselves with the storm of
emotions raging inside them.
And what was the gain from such a thod?
Once that first stage reached its peak, the array shifted its function. It began absorbing the fragnts of the shattered soul domains, collecting every broken piece like a scavenger harvesting the remains of a ruined battlefield. If even the smallest crack appeared within a spiritual domain, the array would seize it, widening the fracture and drawing out everything contained within. Naturally, such a process led to the inevitable death of every being caught
within the array's influence.
And after that?
The array would absorb the life force that burst forth from their life channels
at the mont of death. The instant life slipped away, torrents of energy
surged outward, and the array greedily devoured them all. Absorbing such enormous quantities of life energy, energy whose density rivaled primordial energy itself, was no simple task, yet the array was built precisely for that purpose.
In the end, all of it was stored within that single array.
A terrifying accumulation of life and death condensed into one artifact. And yet... despite the monstrous power it could produce, the array itself was
not materially expensive as many imagined. Its foundation had been constructed from the bones of infants, ground and shaped into the core of its structure, while the blood of virgins had been used as the ink to inscribe its
runic patterns and cursed diagrams.
It was an array rumored to be supported, inspired, and even designed by
mythical entities known as demons.
Demons...
It was said that they were the origin behind every curse art that had spread
throughout the universe. Every forbidden technique. Every vile and twisted ritual practiced by cursers and sorcerers in their endless pursuit of power. Ancient legends claid that it was the demons themselves who had once taught such arts to mortals in the distant past, knowledge that had then passed from master to disciple through countless generations until it survived even to
the present day.
Was that truly the truth?
Perhaps.
Yet there was another possibility as well.
Sotis... the hearts of certain humans were even more cruel than those of
demons.
"Of all people, you are the one asking such a question?" Damir said with a deep
frown, the anger on his face now impossible to hide. "Fine, I will answer you.
Even without this array, I would still be a nine-star Royal Soul Master with countless thods of my own."
Then he lifted a finger and pointed toward her.
"But you... without the Ashification Law that your father handed to you on a
silver platter, what would you be?"
Helen stopped advancing. Her brows tightened further, the muscles of her face
tensing slightly.
"I've heard that you and your foolish elder brother like to play the role of revolutionaries," Damir continued mockingly. "You talk about living outside the shadow of your great father, about forging your own path or whatever
nonsense you like to believe."
He waved his hand dismissively. "Imaginary heroics invented by small minds trying to feel important." Then he pointed at her again, his tone dripping with contempt. "Without the bodies he gave you and the laws you inherited since childhood,
both of you would probably be begging for coins on the side of so forgotten road right now!!"
"... You know nothing." Helen replied quietly, her eyes cold and emotionless. "Hehe. On the contrary, I know quite a lot." Damir laughed softly.
The array had already begun working on her. He could feel it clearly. The subtle
fluctuations in her aura, the tremors spreading through her spiritual domain like distant earthquakes beneath the surface. Her negative emotions were being stirred, coaxed, drawn out little by little.
"At least your brother has an excuse he could present, Damir continued. "If
soone asked him why he behaves the way he does, he could say that his mad father ordered the death of his wife and daughter after deciding that Hedrick was no longer leading the war properly, so he turned him into a warning for the
rest of his siblings."
Then Damir pointed toward Helen again.
"But you?"
His smile widened with ridicule.
"What explanation do you have for acting like so rebellious stray who needs
no one?"
He burst into laughter. "Hahaha... what kind of illusion are you living in?"
He pointed at her twice this ti, his expression deliberately provocative.
"You did not follow Hedrick, the Son of Destruction, the symbol of vengeance."
"And you did not even join your other foolish siblings who spend their lives
licking your father's boots."
He tilted his head slightly.
"... You already have enough problems of your own. You don't even know what
you truly want."
Then he struck his own chest twice with his fist.
"And yet you left all your existential confusion behind and ca here just to
attack ?"
His gaze sharpened as he stared at her.
"Tell ... do you have sothing wrong with your mind?"
Ba-doom.
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