Chapter 1669: The Futility of Struggle The heads of six Origin Ouroboros emerged from the cracks in space, and a careful observer would realize that these cracks did not look torn, but seemed to have been chewed through, due to the ragged chunks of Reality that were simply missing. They appeared to be slowly emerging from the cracks, but that was only if you were watching them from the eighth-dimensional level, any lower order immortals would just see a blur of endless stretch of scaled flesh that resembled the face of destruction, from stars bleeding out their guts into the Aether, or the screams of dying dimensions as they collapsed into nothing. Divus, who led her brothers and sisters to the Great Desert, did not care for anything else in Reality. Everything could be ending, and she would not blink an eye. In her mind, there was only Rowan; everything else was prey. As the Ouroboros Serpents descended, Reality began to collapse around them, as shockwaves of destructive force blasted from their bodies, as if they were streams of antimatter plunging into an ocean of matter. The six serpents fully emerged from the cracks in Reality, allowing themselves to be gripped by the attractive force of the desert. They began to fall towards it. The fall barely took three seconds, but all of Reality shrieked like a dying maiden being grievously butchered as the bodies of the serpent combusted all of space and time, leaving shining trails behind them that appeared incredibly beautiful but contained so much potent forces of destruction that an Old One would be grinded to ash inside of them if they remained for a few seconds. This was all the serpents had to do. Their impossible weight being dragged by the power of the desert was in itself a potent tool for destruction. There was a bright flash as the body of Divus slammed into the desert, rapidly followed by five other flashes of bright white light. This series of flashing lights was so bright that for this instant, any immortal with a powerful sense could observe that the entirety of Reality brightened for a moment. An expanding shockwave and debris that formed asymmetric patterns from the sands of the desert overheated and directly collapsed into their basic structure, blasting out like radiation. This caused the entire space for countless light years to glow with a fifteen-colored shimmer that would bring madness to even the Old Ones who observed it. In that instant, ninety-nine percent of all life in the great desert and its surroundings was wiped out. ‘What would a true calamity look like? The sort of thing that could end all that we know… That answer is something that I did not know, but now, I have seen it.’ These were the last thoughts of Kacius Black, and then there was silence… nothing. For although the shell of his body still lived, his soul was gone. Yet, Reality moved on. Cold. Unfeeling. The true face of power had just revealed itself. ® Fury Kuranes, the Prince of Ruin, was one of the survivors, but the power unleashed by the descent of the serpents blasted him into a distant dimension; his cries of astonishment and rage were cut off. This immortal had a great story to tell, but he was not given the opportunity to shine before he was summarily dismissed. The shades of Memories that filled the Great Desert had nearly all been eradicated. They were not gone, but they had been cleansed so effectively that it would take millions of years before they could return. At first, the powerful explosion seemed to have stunned the serpents, as they did not move for a few seconds. Then, they began to stir and slowly rise up. In the distance, Nemesis had been slammed into the ground, his armor cracked and battered, and his helm had been shattered, revealing his chaotic features beneath that resembled a chimera. The face of Nemesis was not one but a legion of faces all mashed together as one. To protect the Great Desert, Primordial Chaos had not hesitated to sacrifice all of the Chaos Bloods in Reality that he could get his hands on and merged them into the body of Nemesis, enabling this being to reach a stupendous amount of power that was not far from those of a Throne. There were some lucky few Chaos Bloods who could escape his reach by virtue of their talents, which enabled them to cultivate powers that slowly separated them from their bloodline of Chaos. Labaletai, the Chaos Door, was one of the few who escaped from Chaos’s hands. He had spent countless years spreading his name across countless dimensions, and as a result, even when Chaos grabbed his body and soul and sacrificed it to Nemesis, his Memories were so powerful that he essentially recreated himself from nothing. Not many Chaos Bloods were so lucky, and in their final moments, they mercifully did not know how they died. Nemesis slowly fought its way out of the shackles of power, pressing it against the ground. The green glow of its gaze was terrifyingly aware… it was as if Nemesis had always been waiting for these serpents to arrive, and everything was a prelude to this moment. “Evil beasts, where does your master hide? Bring him forward to face…” Surprisingly, it was Bahamut that attacked first, disregarding Nemesis ahead. He opened his maws wide open, which resembled a yawning event horizon lined with teeth like dying stars. Clamping down on a vast stretch of desert spanning a hundred gigantic galactic superclusters The memories of the fallen trapped within the sands did not even have the time to realize what was happening when they were drawn into the maws of the serpent alongside a vast amount of the desert sands. Everything unraveled into primal cosmic energy that fueled the serpent’s endless desire to consume, but what was once a nourishing meal now paled in comparison to what they could acquire from feasting on the Origin Land. Nevertheless, all the other Origin Ouroboros serpents knew that they needed to clear out the desert, reveal its core, and allow Divus to finally complete her feast. Nemesis shrieked, it was unknown whether it was in anger for being ignored or it was for seeing the Great Desert being unmade before its eyes. Reacting with a perfect blow from his sword that would leave all in awe, Nemesis swung his blade at Bahamut. The sword’s edge, sharp enough to split quantum strings, flashed upward in an arc that severed Bahamut’s lower jaw clean from his skull. Bahamut’s cold gaze turned towards Nemesis as his falling jaws collapsed into motes of dying starlight and returned to his face, and his grievous injury vanished. “You shall die for that.” A voice like the deathly chill at the center of the abyss emerged from Bahamut.