Chapter 188: The Devil’s Second Coming

เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 มี.ค. 2569 03:04

Chapter 188: The Devil’s Second Coming For millions of years, this ancient place had carried the first melody. Now the Devil was back with the second verse—a tone so deep and shadowed it shattered the very foundation of sound, ending the song not in silence, but in the lingering echo of everything it had refused to let fade away. The Upper Crown’s first floor was a realm of magnificence no doubt. In the earlier years of this world, floors changed leaders and rulers consistently as everyone climbed to the top. But like most time, stagnation hits when one reaches a wall that cannot be crossed. The first floor was a massive, upside-down sky-ocean world. The "ground" stretched as an endless expanse of crimson clouds raining upward. Gravity pulled toward the water’s surface, so everyone moved along the underside of the sky, peering down into the ominous, pitch-black sea below. It was truly a realm of wonders... In the skies of this strange, inverted realm, a man appeared with twelve wings that stretched so wide they blanketed the entire sky, blocking the rain as it streamed upward. His polished alabaster skin shimmered with starlight, and four pink, white, and black horns crowned his head. Tattoos sprawled across his bare chest, and he stood barefoot, dressed only in sweatpants—no shirt, no shoes, just pants. The moment he showed up, it felt like a countdown had started—not an actual one, but something inevitable all the same. Elysia observed everything with a mix of curiosity and concern. Usually, she’d be going on about how this realm was ruled by an Eternal Faction and how the ruling race consisted of beautiful sirens—endless nonsense, really—but right now, she knew nothing she said would reach him. [It’s strange... he’s not in some mindless state at all,] Elysia muttered as she studied his existence. [It feels more like a clash of his natures... him, the free, desire-driven soul, against the Dragon of Absolute Endings, a force that knows only carnage and finality,] she mused, watching Ash move. It was just a single step, yet it shattered space itself. Soaring through the skies, he felt the urge to roar once more... ROARRRRRRRR!!!!!! CRACK!!!!!!! The space around the entire first floor cracked apart. By now, everyone was on edge, turning to see what had caused such destruction, but all they could make out was a creature of pure abomination. Ash had begun to transform through the Morpharchs... and his form became the Cycle-Terminus Dragon. His body erupted outward in apocalyptic scale—expanding until he dwarfed the inverted realm itself, a colossus of obsidian-black scales veined with rose-pink starfire that burned without heat, each scale the size of a mountain range, reflecting no light but devouring it whole. Twenty-four wings unfurled like torn night skies—each one vast enough to eclipse continents, feathers replaced by jagged void-plates edged in eternal pink-white flame, every beat sending shockwaves that fractured gravity itself. Four massive horns spiraled into a crown of pink-white-silver crystal, each tip sharp enough to pierce reality, glowing with the fused light of eternity and endings. His eyes were twin cataclysms... left a colossal silver hourglass ringed in pink inferno, sand cascading in impossible loops; right a perfect black void ringed in white flame, swallowing entire sections of the inverted sky. A massive serpentine tail swept across the horizon—stretching beyond the very bounds of the realm as it slammed into its edges, its barbed tip oozing shadows that ate away at space itself. His roar twisted the crimson clouds into spiraling maelstroms, while the black sea beneath churned and boiled into oblivion. The once magnificent first floor now stood on the brink of collapse. From the black sea erupted a desperate tide of life—Sirens in the millions, hair streaming like liquid silver and moonlight, voices already rising in harmonic killing intent that warped the air into visible blades of sound. Leviathans followed—colossal, eel-like behemoths with bioluminescent veins pulsing along their immense bodies, jaws lined with rows of crystalline teeth that gleamed like shattered stars. Behind them were every other race that made of this realm as they moved to defend against the intruder. They rose like a living storm from the depths—tails thrashing, eyes glowing with rage and terror—only to be met by the second wave. Not just them, floating palaces—marble citadels and crystal spires that had drifted for untold number of years above the black sea—shuddered as their Siren rulers poured out. Siren Ancestors. in flowing robes of woven sea-silk.... Siren battle-maidens whose voices fused into choral waves of sonic destruction. Siren elders whose tridents glowed with concepts of eternal tide and drowning silence. They filled the sky in a desperate, beautiful tide—millions, then tens of millions—every water race that had called this floor home now rising as one under the Sirens’ command. Talents ignited. Skills detonated. Concepts roared into being. A Leviathan Sovereign exhaled a breath of Absolute Pressure—space compressing into black spheres that sought to crush Ash from every angle. Sirens sang in unison, their voices weaving a single, piercing Note of Shattered Harmony that tore at reality’s seams. Merfolk warriors hurled tidal spears of pressurized void-water that screamed through the air. Aquatic nymphs summoned chains of Eternal Drowning—liquid links forged from the concept of endless submersion, seeking to wrap Ash and pull him under forever. Siren Ancestors raised tridents of Tidal Might—each one carrying the weight of an entire ocean’s rage, crashing forward in walls of black water. The sky turned into a symphony of annihilation—sonic blades screaming, tidal spears exploding into nova-blooms of pressure and foam, liquid chains clashing against black scales, voices rising in a choral wave that could drown gods. All of it aimed at the Cycle-Terminus Dragon. Yet, all of it was futile. Currently, Ash was far from being mindless, but he was not in control of his body. It was moving purely off of instinct and the Nature of Endings. So he used no talents, nothing at all but the Concept of Endings, Intent of Endings, and Aura of Endings. The dragon’s wings beat once—slow, deliberate—and the realm itself flinched. Every attack met the rose-pink-black aura that radiated from him and simply... ceased. Not deflected. Not destroyed. They simply stopped having ever existed. As the rose-pink-black aura spread further, the entire realm shifted when the Aura of Endings reached its manifestation stage. In an instant, everyone on the floor found themselves in what seemed to be an entirely different place. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖 It was a lifeless void, where only darkness existed—the birthplace and sole home the Dragon of Absolute Endings had ever known. A dead zone far from any world. Here, there was no resistance to the end—it was inevitable. Millions decayed like paper catching fire—Sirens’ voices cracking into silence mid-note, their silver hair crumbling to ash; Leviathans’ colossal bodies graying and flaking apart, bioluminescent veins winking out one by one; merfolk warriors’ tridents falling from lifeless hands as scales peeled away like dead leaves; aquatic nymphs dissolving into colorless mist, their liquid forms evaporating without a ripple. They could see only two devilish figures. One was an immense, illusory dragon, nearly galactic in size, with black scales and eyes like red slits that stared unblinking—watching every ending with cold, patient satisfaction. Meanwhile, Ash, the Cycle-Terminus Dragon himself, devoured them one after another—massive jaws closing around entire schools of Leviathans, wings sweeping through clouds of Sirens, tail lashing through floating palaces that shattered into dust on contact. For an hour straight, millions... perhaps billions found their end as Ash continued on his rampage even after every life ended. He appeared back on the first floor and didn’t leave until the realm looked broken, lifeless, and nothing like what stood before—crimson clouds faded to ashen gray, black sea reduced to cracked, dry void, floating palaces collapsed into floating rubble drifting in silence. Without even minding the ending realm he left, with his mind on nothing more than ending. However, as he left... the realm did not end. No, Ash although warring with the Nature of the Dragon of Absolute Ending... he was not it. If one was to only single out his Dragon essence then he would be the Cycle-Terminus Dragon... One that brings Endings... but also brings new beginnings... The realm had begun to heal and transform into a much stronger and fortified place... One that was now desolate...

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