Right after Leor hurled his spear with the last of his remaining magic power, he staggered, collapsing to his knees and breathing heavily.
Dorian, now back in his humanoid form, caught him before he could fall face-first to the ground, steadying him before asking.
"What the hell happened while I was away?"
Dorian couldn't understand. He had been sealed away in so sort of dinsional gap where even his god King Authority was disconnected from the universe itself.
But now that he had returned and his Authority had re-established its connection, he found that sothing was terribly wrong.
He could no longer sense Kael, Varok, or Sylvara, and Orothis' Authority felt far weaker than it should have been.
Now, Miresi was covered in wounds, her energy nearly depleted. Leor bore nurous injuries, the most severe being a deep wound on his side that refused to heal. Orothis was now an undead, and Malrik, the one who revived him, was missing an arm.
Dorian had attacked Evan the mont he returned, knowing it was the best course of action. Thanks to his tily interference, Evan had been unable to destroy the last remaining roots of the poison flower, giving Orothis the chance to bloom it once more and wither it, poisoning Evan's soul.
They had succeeded in defeating Evan.
But at what cost?
Four out of the eight god Kings were dead, with one returning as an Undead.
Calling it a pyrrhic victory was an understatent.
Miresi, wounded and burned all over, dropped to one knee, breathing heavily as she clenched her bow tightly in her hand.
She lifted her gaze toward Evan, his body impaled with spears and arrows, arms hanging limp, blood dripping from his lips, a gaping hole where Leor's spear had pierced through his chest.
'…He's still not dead?'
His vitality was ridiculous.
Yes, he was a High-Tier Deity, just like they were. Yes, he had even greater vitality due to his Authority of Life. But this—this was beyond reason.
Of course, she had no knowledge of Evan's Sub-Cosmic superiority and the imnse vitality that ca with it. Even now, cosmic energy struggled to nd his broken body, only failing due to the lingering law energies within his wounds.
While Miresi was questioning Evan's absurd vitality, the godslayer was on his last legs.
sarthim; Green: Last Stand.
Green flas of life engulfed Evan's heart.
This ability automatically activated whenever he was near death, and it had saved him a few tis before.
It was his final chance to do anything to save himself… and his last opportunity to bring his enemies down with him.
His head hung low as his gaze drifted to the Vanquisher lying beside him. The black blade was marred with deep cracks, and at the sight of it, Evan forced a wry smile.
"Sorry about… that… buddy."
The Vanquisher trembled in response.
Evan had infused the weapon with far more cosmic energy than it was ant to contain, rapidly degrading its durability and leaving it covered in fractures.
But that wasn't why he apologized.
He apologized because he knew what he was about to do would completely break the blade—and shatter the promise he had made to it.
His next action would destroy the Vanquisher before it could fully form its Ego.
Indeed, the Vanquisher was a weapon in the process of evolving into an Ego weapon.
At this point, it only possessed a rudintary will, capable of expressing basic emotions like joy, sorrow, and anger, but unable to form coherent thoughts.
Evan had promised he would see it beco a true Ego Weapon, yet it seed that was a promise he would never fulfil.
The sword trembled again, transmitting its emotions to Evan, who could only sigh.
At that mont, Dorian was using his divinity and the healing abilities he'd acquired to nd the wounds of Miresi and Leor.
While they were occupied, Evan began to mutter a quiet chant under his breath.
"My flas… born… of a star…"
The Vanquisher quivered as an overwhelming surge of cosmic energy poured into it, far more than it could withstand. The cracks on the blade multiplied at an alarming rate, yet Evan did not stop.
"…aid to cleave the world…"
Universal law energies stirred, swirling around him before converging into the blade.
Naturally, the Kyrexi reacted instantly, their gazes snapping toward him as they felt the overwhelming surge of fla and destruction energies.
Miresi, though wounded, gritted her teeth and grabbed her bow, pouring the last remnants of her divinity into a single arrow. Without hesitation, she loosed it, sending the glowing projectile hurtling straight toward Evan.
Dorian, abandoning his healing efforts on Leor, transford. His head morphed into that of a dragon's, his maw yawning open as he gathered magic power to unleash a devastating breath attack.
"…and to burn even the DIVINE…"
The Vanquisher shot into the air, its fractured blade deflecting Miresi's arrow in a single stroke.
At the sa ti, a vortex of fire erupted around Evan, incinerating the spears impaling him, and burning away every arrow lodged in his flesh.
Blood stread from his wounds, but he paid it no mind as he reached out, grabbing the Vanquisher.
Dorian unleashed his breath attack, and Evan lifted his gaze, his eyes ablaze as he roared with all his might.
|BURN, SARTHIM!!!!|
And the world exploded.
—Literally.
The radiance of the detonation that followed eclipsed the white giant star that Kyrexis Pri orbited, surpassing even the apocalyptic fury of Kilo Novae.
The white giant star itself was obliterated within seconds, its nuclear heart snuffed out as the blast wave expanded outward at impossible speeds.
The devastation did not stop there. Like a cosmic wildfire, the explosion surged outward even faster, tearing apart the alternate dinsion that the Kyrexi system was trapped in.
It expanded further through space, reaching nearby star systems, displacing both their stars and the planets orbiting them. Entire stars were wrenched from their orbital paths around the centre of the galaxy.
Yet the blast continued to expand, annihilating stars and consuming planets. Shockwaves, cosmic energy, and gamma-ray bursts erupted in all directions, tearing apart the magnetic fields of distant stars and devastating the planets orbiting them, bringing untold catastrophes to those systems.
The force of the explosion sent tremors through the entire Orithyia galaxy, unleashing waves of cosmic energy that rippled outward, even disturbing the satellite galaxies that surrounded it.
The overwhelming brightness of the detonation eventually faded as its energy source was exhausted, yet its light continued to race across spaceti, reaching distant regions and revealing the cause of the sudden worldwide earthquakes and violent solar storms afflicting countless worlds.
◇ ◇ ◇
In the vast emptiness where the Kyrexi system once existed, there was virtually nothing left.
Every trace of matter had been obliterated down to the last atom, leaving only the corpses of Deity Realm beings and shattered weapon fragnts drifting in the darkness.
Fragnts of the Vanquisher's broken blade floated aimlessly, most having been flung across space by the force of the explosion, hurled toward distant worlds.
Evan's wounded and battered body drifted in the darkness, blood spilling from the open wounds where Miresi's arrows and Leor's spears had torn through him. In his grip remained only the hilt of the Vanquisher, with barely five centitres of its blade still intact.
His eyelids fluttered open, and for a few monts, there was only darkness. Then, faint light from distant stars beyond the reach of his attack's devastation finally reached him.
And in that darkness, he sensed two faint sources of divinity.
Leor and Malrik.
His last surge of power had killed Dorian, Miresi, and Orothis once again.
No… it had killed Malrik as well. But Malrik had returned, revived as an undead. That was the only possible reason he had survived an attack that had even annihilated Dorian, who had been at nearly full strength.
As for Leor, Evan neither knew nor cared how he had survived. What mattered was that he did.
But the real question was—could Evan still do anything about it?
The green flas burning within his heart were fading, and he could already feel the law of death standing by his doorstep, waiting for him to take his final breath.
In that mont, a thought crossed his mind.
'Good thing I never promised Kayla anything... because in the end, I don't have a choice.'
Yes, in the end, he had no choice.
'And then there was that bastard… the one who freed Dorian…'
Evan sighed, forcing his mouth open as he muttered an apology to soone who wasn't there.
"Sorry… about this… Kayla, I might… not co back from… this."
Sensing the ambient cosmic energy around him, he exerted the last of his control over it, forcing a Faux True Voice as he spoke.
|…sarthim.|
His Unique Skill activated.
Flas erupted, engulfing his body in a violent inferno.
In the darkness, Leor and Malrik both saw the sudden blaze, its light cutting through the void. At the sight of it, Leor cursed.
'This bastard isn't dead?!'
That last attack had been far stronger than even its catastrophic aftermath suggested.
It was obvious, considering it had killed three god Kings at once!
Evan had concentrated all of its force within a specific radius. Had he simply unleashed the energy recklessly, the devastation would have been far greater. But he had ensured every bit of that power was directed toward breaking the durabilites and vitalities of the Kyrexi.
Now, seeing Evan's body engulfed in "purple" flas, Leor could not fathom how he still had the energy for anything.
At the sight of those flas, Leor instantly assud Evan intended to forge a new weapon with Ember Genesis.
But Malrik thought otherwise.
Having turned himself into an undead after suffering severe damage to both his body and soul, he had lost more than half his power in the process.
Yet, perhaps because he was closer to death than even Evan, he noticed sothing different.
'No, that is not fla construct creation.'
He could sense, sohow, that whatever Evan was about to do was connected to "death."
And that baffled him.
In the 3,850 years since he had first crossed paths with Evan, never once had Evan displayed even the slightest affinity for death-related power.
Malrik had checked, back when Evan was far weaker than him. He knew Evan wielded flas of life, but death? No. Evan had never once shown an inkling of such power.
It wasn't an artifact either, Malrik was certain of that. In his current state, Evan didn't even have enough energy to open his subspace, let alone summon an artifact.
People understood that each colour of Evan's flas carried a different ability, or at least, the abilities he had chosen to reveal.
Yet, even then, people only knew of six colours.
Evan's flas had seven colours.
The mont that thought crossed Malrik's mind, he realized what he was witnessing.
The flas surrounding Evan's body were not the "Indigo" flas of Ember Genesis, but the unknown "Violet" flas.
Panting heavily, Evan forced his lips open once more.
|...Viol-|
|Didn't I warn you not to dare think about it?|
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