Chapter 408: Survived The standoff lasted only a heartbeat, but in that moment, the fabric of the negative plane began to tear. Ethan gripped the Sword of Infinity, its hilt humming with the combined resonance of his twin oceans. His strength instantly leaped to the Source Authority realm. Before him, Erebus stood with hands clasped behind his back, a casual observer of a world he had outgrown. "No answer?" Erebus tilted his head, his eyes like twin abysses. "Then let us see if your spirit is as loud as your silence." Ethan didn’t wait. He knew that against a being of this caliber, hesitation was death. "Infinity Slash: World Ender!" Ethan swung. The Sword of Infinity didn’t just cut the air; it deleted the distance between him and Erebus. A pillar of grey-gold light, wide enough to swallow a galaxy, erupted from the blade. It was a strike backed by the Infinite Bloodline, amplified a million times over. The shockwave turned the surrounding mountains into microscopic dust instantly. Erebus didn’t move his feet. He simply raised a single finger. CLANG. The sound was not of metal on metal, but of reality hitting an unbreakable wall. The massive pillar of light stopped dead against Erebus’s fingernail. The "Death Manifestation" smiled thinly. "Good weight," Erebus remarked. "But you lack depth." With a flick of his finger, Erebus sent the energy back. Ethan’s eyes constricted. He pivoted, the Law of Space bending to his will as he reappeared a thousand miles away, but the rebound of his own attack still shattered his ribs. His golden cells worked overtime, knitting his body back together in milliseconds. "I’m just a child to him," Ethan realized, blood leaking from his lips. "Even with the sword’s peak power, I’m barely scratching his skin." Ethan roared, his aura exploding. He stopped holding back. He merged his Ocean of Energy and Ocean of Entropy into a singular, chaotic vortex. The sky of the negative plane turned into a swirling nightmare of gold and grey. "Genesis Domain: The Void’s End!" Ethan transformed into a streak of light. He moved so fast that time itself seemed to stutter. He struck Erebus ten thousand times in a single second. Each blow was a masterpiece of destruction, capable of erasing Source Authority beings. The sky was filled with the metallic screams of the sword hitting Erebus’s casual defenses. To the watchers in the distance—the terrified Source Authority rulers—it looked like a golden god was sieging a fortress of darkness. The entire negative plane was shaking. This was a battle that shouldn’t be possible. Erebus, however, was playing. He moved with the grace of a dancer, parrying the Sword of Infinity with his palms, his expression one of mild amusement. "You have the spark of a creator," Erebus said, his voice echoing inside Ethan’s soul. "But you are playing in a playground meant for giants." Erebus suddenly moved. It wasn’t a fast movement; it was a conceptual shift. One moment he was ten feet away; the next, his hand was resting lightly on Ethan’s chest. "Collapse." A tiny spark of pure darkness erupted. Ethan felt as if a star had been born inside his lungs. His golden cells disintegrated. His oceans of essence surged wildly, trying to reject the foreign power. He was sent flying across the million-mile expanse, crashing through dimensions until he hit the very border of the negative plane. [Master! Your health is at 5%! You must leave now!] Yumiko’s voice was a siren in his head. Ethan gritted his teeth, his vision blurring. He saw Erebus walking toward him across the void, looking as fresh as if he had just taken a stroll in a garden. "I can’t beat him," Ethan whispered. "But I can’t die here." As Erebus reached out to finalize the capture, Ethan did something unthinkable. He didn’t use the sword. He reached into his own body, into the Ocean of Entropy, and condensed its infinite mass into a single, microscopic point. He used the Law of Entropy,the very law he had birthed the negative plane and forced it to detonate, targeting the space Erebus occupied. "Absolute Entropy" For the first time, Erebus’s eyes widened. The air inside his own lungs began to decay. The cells of his invincible body suddenly forgot how to hold their form. It was a momentary glitch in his perfection, a tiny crack in his absolute authority. Erebus stumbled, caught off-guard by the sheer audacity of a "primitive" using a Genesis-level law against him. "Now!" Ethan screamed. He threw the Sword of Infinity forward to act as a decoy and activated his final escape. He tore a hole in the dimensional wall, fueled by the explosion of his own entropy, and vanished into the gap between planes. The negative world fell silent. Erebus stood still, his chest heaving once. He looked at his hand; a small, faint scar was visible on his palm. He started to laugh,a deep, booming sound that shook the stars. "Interesting. Very interesting." The aftermath was a cosmic earthquake. In the Origin Worlds (the positive plane), the supreme leaders of every Original Race suddenly looked toward the sky. They felt a ripple of power so alien and so vast that their bloodlines trembled. The news spread like wildfire: Someone fought the sleeping Erebus in the negative plane and lived. The hunt began instantly. Every supreme power in the positive plane started searching for the human with the "strange smell." But inside the void, a much more terrifying entity noticed this small battle. "The Presence," the Absolute Continuum being that ruled the negative laws,the master of the law of entropy, sensed the taboo. Someone had mastered the Law of Entropy without his permission. In the white space between worlds, Ethan was running. Suddenly, the space around him began to turn into white static. He felt a chill that surpassed death. It was as if a giant hand was reaching out to erase his name from the book of life. "What is that?" Ethan gasped, his body trembling. "I feel like... I’m being deleted." [Master! An Absolute Continuum being just attacked you!You used the Law of Entropy, the Genesis-level law of the negative plane. You broke the ultimate taboo. "The Presence" is initiating an Erasure Sequence to delete your existence!] Ethan didn’t look back. He poured every drop of his remaining Infinite Bloodline into his speed. He slammed through the final barrier of the Origin World and fell into a remote, hidden star system just as the white static snapped shut behind him. He crashed onto a barren moon, coughing up golden blood. He was safe, but only for now. [Master, you have survived, but you are now a marked man.You have crossed the line. You must hide and grow. Until you can withstand their Erasure power, you should be a ghost in a world of hunters. Besides I think, One Abovel All would soon start searching for you.] Ethan looked at his shaking hands. He had fought a god and looked into the eyes of the ultimate eraser. "Let them search," Ethan whispered, his golden eyes glowing with a new, cold light. "By the time they find me, I won’t be running." He closed his eyes and entered the space cube. With his realm at the eternal sovereign realm, now the cube could block even the prying eyes of the absolute continuum beings too. "Yumiko, now that I am survived from an Absolute Continuum being, would I gain his power?"