For five and a half months, Cain and ylin hunted without rest.
From one prey to the next, they stalked the Second Realm like shadows, consuming souls, sealing bodies, and breaking True Nas within the Scarlet Throne. Their thods were rciless, their movents flawless-always erasing every trace of their existence once the fight ended.
By the ti the gates of the Throne closed behind the corpse of yet another ArchDeity-one who embodied both flas and stone-the Neo-Demon and True Depravita collapsed upon the ruined battlefield.
Their bodies were broken. Limbs were missing, skin burned, and energy reserves bled dry. Yet wide, savage smiles split their faces. They had triumphed against one of the strongest Late Archdeities in the Second Realm. It had cost them everything they had in that fight, but victory was all that mattered.
The Throne's vitality flooded back into Cain, restoring shredded flesh and filling his veins with stolen power. Alongside the healing ca sothing more-an Innate Ability, stripped from the fallen ArchDeity, broken down and converted into raw essence. As he had done fourteen tis before, Cain fed this origin power into Reaper Touch, his chosen weapon among his many Innate Abilities.
And then-change.
Inside the abyss of his Astral Black Hole, the taphysical
manifestation of Reaper Touch began to tremble. Its form warped, its energy swelling as though too vast to be contained. Waves of destructive essence bled outward from Cain's body, corroding the world around him. Soil crumbled into sand before disintegrating into dust. Air warped, light dimd, and even space-ti itself seed to wither under the rising tide of death.
The energy surged higher, building toward a crescendo. At its climax, the phantom of Reaper Touch transford into a hooded figure draped in darkness, clutching a scythe forged of pure annihilation. The instant after, a pillar of death force erupted from Cain, so colossal it seed to pierce the heavens.
It did not last long.
The pillar collapsed inward, all its devastation condensed into Cain's hands. A dark luster coated his fingers, and even the slightest movent fractured the fabric of reality itself. Cain clenched his fists, exhaling a trembling breath.
A laugh escaped him-half savage, half exultant. After months of sacrifices and endless slaughter, Reaper Touch had finally evolved. No longer was it rely a weapon of destruction. It had ascended into the realm of Alpha-Oga Overgod Tier Innate Abilities, a force capable of killing even the most supre existences.
Cain's eyes glowed like supernovas as he deactivated the ability and turned to ylin. She t his gaze and nodded, her expression firm, her aura brimming with silent resolve.
Now, with his killing power sharpened to its peak, Cain finally had the confidence to face his ultimate target.
They did not rush. Both devoted the rest of the day to healing, ditating, and refining their energy. When their bodies and souls were once again at their peak, the duo rose into the sky, scarlet flas in their wake, and vanished toward destiny.
In the Second Realm, battlefields had beco commonplace. The endless clashes between the Life Path and the Freedom Path had scarred the land beyond recognition. Mountains were flattened, rivers dyed red, skies blackened with ash.
Normally, corpses left behind were burned or destroyed to prevent corruption. The residual energy radiating from dead ArchDeities could twist the land into abominations if left unchecked. Yet battles were sotis so fierce and bloody that neither side had the
strength to clean up the aftermath.
The result: sprawling graveyards where countless corpses lay piled together, entire landscapes turned into charnel pits. To most, these places were dangerous. To others-they were paradises.
In one such graveyard, where even ArchDeities had fallen, a silver-haired woman moved among the dead.
She was breathtaking in her terror. Silver strands cascaded like moonlight, her violet eyes glowing with an otherworldly fire that pierced all it gazed upon. She wore a sleek, form-fitting black attire, elegant yet edged with nace. Shadows rippled around her body like living smoke, as though reality itself recoiled from her presence. Wherever she stepped, psychic energy and soul force coalesced. From the corpses around her, skeletal wraiths rose, hollow-eyed, burning with violet flas. They writhed and leered, shackled to her will, dancing in tornt like puppets strung by invisible wires. The woman moved with casual cruelty, her gaze sweeping the corpses as though choosing delicacies from a candy store. With a flick of her fingers, the strongest among the dead were wrenched into the
air.
Of course, she was no other than Catherine, the Giant Slayer. The
Puppetmaster of ArchDeities.
Her violet eyes flared. At her command, the bodies twisted grotesquely. Muscles unraveled into fibers, bones shattered into shards, organs and sinew warped into unnatural threads. All these fragnts swirled together into a storm of gore and bone.
Without hesitation, Catherine began to knit them together. Piece by piece, the storm coalesced into a monstrosity that towered over the
graveyard.
The abomination's form coiled like a colossal centipede, its body armored in jagged plates of bone, every segnt lined with dozens of writhing limbs tipped in razored claws. It was vast, terrible, and wrong-an abomination born of countless corpses fused into one. And yet, it was mindless. A hollow weapon, powerful but without will. Catherine's smile widened. She was not finished.
With a single glance, the violet wraiths surrounding her lunged into the monstrosity's body. One after another, they rged with the abomination, twisting its hollow shell into sothing more. A psychic core ignited. Its hollow sockets lit with flas. The fusion birthed consciousness, a cruel mockery of life.
By the ti the process ended, the monster's aura radiated at the level of an ArchDeity.
Catherine's smile turned radiant, almost euphoric.
The war, which brought devastation to all others, was a blessing to her. Before the Life-Freedom conflict, corpses of ArchDeity-tier beings were rare, nearly impossible to acquire. But now-now they littered the earth. And with them, her path of cultivation blossod without restraint. She had never been freer, never been stronger.
She spread her arms to welco her creation. A weapon, a servant, another step toward her supremacy.
But before she could revel in triumph-her eyes narrowed.
The earth trembled. Her instincts scread.
And then, from the ground at her feet, a hand erupted.
It was not flesh, nor bone, but a thing of pure death and annihilation. Its surface glead with a dark luster, and the air around it fractured like shattered glass. Reality itself seed to recoil from its touch. The hand shot upward, impossibly fast, aiming directly for her throat.
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