Chapter 1676: WAR AGAINST THE OUTWORLDLY The Overseer’s words struck the deities like thunder. His voice, sharpened by desperation and millenias of repressed fear, drilled into their minds until all they could think of was survival. One by one, their divine forms trembled.... not with reverence toward Gustav anymore, but with a reborn fury. Fear had turned to rage. Rage became courage. Courage twisted into reckless defiance. And then, they attacked. It began with a single roar from the Deity of Tempests, a being whose true form stretched across an entire spiral arm of a galaxy. But that roar ignited the rest. Stars dimmed Nebulae twisted Celestial forces rushed forward —because every deity had joined the battle at once. The universe itself became a battlefield. The first surge of divine power crashed toward Gustav like an ocean made of suns, a wave of attacks so overwhelming that mortal senses would have disintegrated just from witnessing it. Over a dozen divine energies converged: • Black lightning from the Abyssal Sky • Blades forged from crystallized time • Spears of condensed planetary cores • Oceans of flame hot enough to burn the concept of heat itself • Claws of spatial distortion • Curses cast from forgotten languages older than galaxies All at once. All from every direction. All intending to erase him. The attacks struck, and for a split second—just a split second—the cosmos vanished behind the explosion. The light swallowed everything. Space-time ruptured. Gravity folded. Reality screamed. Then the light cleared. And Gustav was still standing. His clothes hadn’t even rippled. But the deities whose sizes rivaled constellations, were trembling, realizing the truth: He was not resisting their attacks. He was simply too powerful for them to matter. Before the next cluster of attacks could form, Gustav moved. He didn’t teleport. He didn’t vanish. He simply existed where he pleased, ignoring the limitations of space. He appeared beside the Deity of Tempests who was a creature of cosmic storms with a form that spanned hundreds of light-years—and placed a hand on its swirling core. Then he casually pushed. Just a single, uninterested push. The deity’s titanic body collapsed inward, folding like wet paper, spiraling into itself until it compressed into a pinhead-sized sphere—and then Gustav flicked it, sending it crashing through a chain of galaxies, tearing each one apart like they were fragile ornaments. The deity didn’t survive. And Gustav absorbed the remaining essence as casually as inhaling a breath. The deities watching recoiled. But there was no time for shock. Dozens more attacked in a more coordinated and strategic wave this time. The Deity of Gravity twisted spacetime into an imploding void to crush Gustav. The Deities of Life and Decay intertwined their powers to erase him from all evolutionary timelines. The Deity of Dimensions folded a miniature universe around him. The Deity of Sound unleashed a scream that ruptured planets across the cosmos. It was beautiful. Terrifying. Magnificent. And utterly meaningless. Gustav raised his hand and snapped his fingers. Reality rebelled against the sound. The shockwave inverted, folding back into the Deity of Sound, shattering his form from the inside. Then Gustav turned slightly and unleashed a burst of invisible force—so precise and controlled that it struck the Deity of Dimensions with surgical exactness, erasing her from existence before her dimensional spheres could even collapse. Then he twisted, grabbed a tendril of gravity from the imploded void, and slung it like a rope—binding three more deities together before ripping their bodies apart like stitched cloth. Every deity that died was instantly absorbed into him. Their powers. Their domains. Their essences. Their histories. Gustav consumed them all. He wasn’t merely fighting. He was ascending. At this point, thousands of divine servants poured into the field. These were armies from different domains: • Shadow wraiths from the Dark Dimension • Lightborn titans from the Radiant Sanctum • Flame spirits from the Infernal Core • Crystal guardians from the Frozen Tesseract • Planet-sized beasts from the Giant’s Trial Domain Every deity had their own realm. Every realm had its own warriors. Every warrior knew this was war. Tens of thousands of cosmic armies swarmed Gustav simultaneously. Nocturnis entered the fray too, unleashing a darkness so absolute it swallowed entire star systems. His silhouette stretched across the void as he roared, sending torrents of shadow that attempted to devour the Outworldly. The Overseer joined as well, finally unleashing the extent of his authority. His form swelled until he towered even above Nocturnis with his energy ripping holes through distant galaxies. Together, they reshaped the battlefield into a chaotic hellstorm. Beams of transcendent power clashed, neutralizing each other. Dimensions overlapped violently. Time stuttered. Matter liquefied. Stars turned into motes of dust under the pressure. Every moment felt like the universe was seconds from total destruction. And yet Gustav remained unmatched. Even though he finally began taking hits due to their sheer numbers, the strikes did nothing more than make him glance around, mildly irritated. He lifted his hand and unleashed a pulse. A simple pulse. It exploded outward like a quiet ripple, but everything it touched—mountains of shadow, tides of flame, armies of crystal, titans of light—vanished. Not killed. Not destroyed. Unmade. Even Nocturnis flinched as his shadows peeled away like wet paint. The Overseer steadied himself with gritted teeth. This wasn’t a battle anymore. It was a countdown. A countdown to the deities’ extinction. Every deity Gustav killed contributed to the impossible expansion of his power. He absorbed them seamlessly, pulling their domains into himself. His hair flashed with streaks of otherworldly colors. His skin glowed brighter, more refined. His aura deepened until existence itself shook whenever he moved. Even the concept of "strength" seemed insufficient to describe what he was becoming. The deities were horrified. Because they could feel it. What Gustav was now... wasn’t what he would be by the end of this battle. He wasn’t simply regaining power. He was evolving. And their deaths were fueling it. When nearly half the deities had fallen, the Overseer realized they wouldn’t win... not by bombarding him with attacks. 50% was one thing but he was an entirely different level of being at a 100%. The overseer had one final trick in mind.