Ren Ming had brushed this layer of reality before.
Little grazes. Controlled experiments. Guiding Rias and the others to let their souls skim the borders between worlds, feeling the cold skin of chaos without digging in.
This time, he didn't skim.
He plunged.
The Dimensional Gap peeled open around him like a wound, and beneath the wound was something worse—raw, screaming mess, unshaped possibility thrashing in all directions. Colors that weren't colors. Sounds that never decided to be sound. Rules flickering in and out of existence like faulty lights.
Reality at its ugliest.
Ren pushed both hands into it.
Flesh split. Bones screamed. Every law that acknowledged "human body" tried to reject him at once. The Gap's emptiness howled, chewing at skin and meridians, trying to un-write him.
He didn't pull back.
"Universal travel isn't teleportation," he realized, as his arm was torn to white ash and then rebuilt in the same instant. Muscle, skin and sleeve knitting, tearing, knitting again in a nauseating loop.
"It's permission."
The thought came with the same calm certainty he used when correcting homework, but it hit his soul like a hammer. Somewhere deep in the framework of Heaven's System, the old seals of the Biblical God stirred. The ones Ren had studied from the inside—world-linking laws buried in the script of Heaven and Hell, defining who could move between realms, when, and how.
They weren't "portals." They were rules.
"Borders are agreements," he thought. "If I rewrite the agreement, I rewrite the roads."
Ophis' Infinity moved silently somewhere in the void, a concept that said, This should have no edge. No end. No limit.
Great Red's Dream coiled lazily across the Gap, leaving behind half-real trails—paths that weren't roads, but could become roads if someone understood the pattern.
Trihexa's Apocalypse was a wound that never closed, a history of destruction stamped into the bones of this universe. Every time something ended, that echo answered.
Ren reached out and seized all three.
Not as tools to crush. As principles.
Infinity: no borders.
Dream: paths through formlessness.
Apocalypse: change that can't be undone.
Inside his Soul Palace, the sky shook.
...
The first nine Fate Palaces in his inner cosmos were already monsters—towering worlds of jade and gold hung in a sky etched with Dao lines, each Palace packed full of laws that would have taken other Saints entire lives to polish.
Now, they moved.
Space between them stretched, shuddered, making room. The foundation of his cultivation groaned like a continent trying to grow new mountains.
A tenth palace emerged from the storm.
Then an eleventh.
Then a twelfth.
They didn't drift like independent stars.
They rose together, stacking—not physically, but conceptually—forming a vaulted canopy that arched over the entire inner world. Twelve palaces, twelve pillars, locking into a single Heaven above everything he was.
He felt the titles click into place, echoes of another universe's path running through his bones. Ancient Saint. Grand Dao Saint. Heavens Creation. Primordial Saint—twelve palaces forming the Heavens themselves, the level that in Li Qiye's world decided who sat on the Immortal Emperor's throne.
In the Nine Worlds, twelve Fate Palaces had been enough for Li Qiye to crush Di Zuo's Aphotic Dao and step on Heavenly Kings like stepping on stones in a river.
Here, those same rules slammed down on a completely different sky.
Outside, nobody saw the detailed mechanics.
They only saw a man standing in the heart of god-killing light, body cracking, blood flying—
—and refusing to fall.
...
In the viewing field, Asia screamed.
"Stop it!" Her voice broke, tears pouring down her cheeks as she lurched toward the image. "He'll die, he'll die—!"
Her Sacred Gear pulsed faintly under her sleeve, reacting to the sheer amount of "wounded" being written into Ren's existence.
"Asia!" Koneko caught her from one side, small arms locking tight. Kuroka wrapped around her from the other, tails flaring as if they could physically shield the girl with fluff.
On the front edge of the floating platform, Rias moved before she thought.
Power flared up from her Soul Palace, destruction rising in a hot rush. Red demonic aura boiled over her arms as she lunged for the barrier, fingers curled like claws.
"I can't just stand here while he—"
Akeno grabbed her first, arms banding around Rias' waist, muscles straining. "Rias!"
Sona seized Akeno's wrist with equal force, her own demonic power knitting into a binding weave around them both.
"Rias!" Sona snapped. "Calm—"
"Rias."
Sirzechs' voice snapped through the viewing zone.
Not loud. Just sharp.
The way a blade is sharp.
Rias froze.
Her brother's usually gentle eyes were ice. The aura of the Crimson Satan pressed for one instant—not on Ren, not on the battlefield, but on his little sister.
"If you interfere," Sirzechs said, each word clear, "you kill him. This is his path. We cannot step into it."
Rias bit down on her lip hard enough to taste blood. Her hands shook, demonic power coiling around her fingers like smoke needing somewhere to burn. Akeno's arms tightened.
"…Ren…" she whispered, voice breaking.
Behind them, Asia sobbed into Koneko's shoulder, small fingers clutching at white hair like a lifeline.
Serafall stood on the far side, hands balled at her sides. The usual idol-girl brightness was gone from her face; her lips were bloodless where she bit them.
Gabriel's wings rustled, feathers fluffing with the instinct to rush in and heal, to cover, to protect. Her hands trembled where they gripped the railing.
Even Tiamat's fingers dug into the crystal edge, talons half-formed, blue scales ghosting along the back of her hand.
"…He looks like he's being erased," Natsume whispered, throat tight. "Like he's… not supposed to exist there."
"He is," Penemue said, voice thin. "He's… that idiot..."
Her glasses were halfway down her nose, pupils blown wide as she tracked flows of law no Fallen had ever been meant to see.
Down among the gods, the reactions were different.
Hades chuckled, the sound dry as grave dust.
"Look at him burn," he said softly, black flames in his empty eyes. "Even he can't swallow everything."
Rizevim, half his body a wreck from previous clashes, wheezed a laugh.
"Dance, dance, little bug…!"
Brahma sighed, the breath carrying both weariness and a strange, almost fond resignation. Vishnu's shoulders slumped, complex chakra patterns quieting as he watched. Shiva closed his eyes, listening—not with ears, but with Destruction itself—to the song being played by chaos and one stubborn human.
Trihexa didn't react.
The Apocalyptic Beast simply poured more killing intent into the maelstrom, heads vomiting annihilation, bodies of impossible geometry pumping out curses and breath that erased matter.
Great Red, who rarely bothered to take anything seriously, stopped mid-flight.
The True Red Dragon God's massive eyes narrowed, the lazy "zoom zoom iyaaan" mood gone from his aura for once. Dream-eddies around him stiffened, attention sharpening.
Ophis tilted her head, dragon body coiled in a nearby patch of the Gap, watching with black, depthless eyes.
"He is… noisy," she murmured, voice flat, almost childlike. "But… the noise felt… right."
Nobody could answer her.
Because just then, the breaking point came.
...
Ren's body shattered.
From the outside, that's all it was.
The silhouette they'd been watching—human-sized, coat flapping, hair whipping in a storm of god-killing force—simply fractured. Lines of pure white ran across his frame like cracks in porcelain, then exploded outward.
Light ate him.
The battlefield's enforced "ground" split, the hard plane of reined-in dimensional chaos finally giving way under the combined assault of Trihexa's apocalypse, gods' trump cards, dragon roars, curse storms.
For one heartbeat, the viewing field showed nothing but blinding white.
In Kuoh, people looked up from their daily lives, hands stilling on keyboards, coffee cups, steering wheels. They didn't know why their hearts suddenly pounded, why the world seemed to lurch beneath their feet.
Ley lines groaned.
Seals set by the Biblical God long ago hummed, strained, complained. Barriers that separated Underworld from Heaven, Heaven from human world, human world from forgotten spaces—every one of them quivered like glass about to crack.
Then everything buckled.
The light that had expanded, threatening to wash over dimensions, collapsed inward.
Like breath sucked back into lungs.
The Dimensional Gap, that endless ocean of nothing and too-much, twisted around a single point.
When the brilliance faded—
—there were twelve Fate Palaces hanging in the sky.
Not the sky of Ren's inner world.
The Gap's.
They loomed over everything—Trihexa's writhing bulk, Great Red's colossal form, the scattered gods, the shattered remnants of Qlippoth and Hero Faction forces.
Each palace was a world unto itself.
One seemed carved from dark jade mountains, Dao rivers flowing down its sides like molten light. Another was a city of floating pavilions woven from threads of script that never stopped rearranging. A third was a wheel of bronze galaxies, spinning endlessly, runes burning between its spokes.
There was a palace that looked like an inverted sea, waves frozen in mid-crash, another that resembled an ancient battlefield where no corpse ever rotted, only laws. One was nothing but a black cube, silent and oppressive, another a forest of stone trees whose leaves were tiny inscriptions.
They had different shapes.
But together, they formed a single structure.
A Heaven.
Their combined prestige crashed down without fanfare, without roaring sound-effects or light shows—just a quiet, crushing presence that made even gods feel their knees want to bend.
Issei's breath caught in his throat. Even through the protections of the viewing field, the weight pressed against his chest, making his boosted dragon power curl up like a scolded dog.
Asia's hands slid from her mouth to her heart, fingers digging into fabric.
Rias' pupils shrank. Her destruction power, fierce and proud, curled back inside her Soul Palace without her telling it to, like a wild animal suddenly confronted with something older and bigger.
Michael paused. For the first time in a very long time, he felt something that could only honestly be called fear.
"…This… authority…" he whispered.
Odin's one eye gleamed like a spark catching dry tinder.
"What an actual god feels like," he muttered, lips curling. "Hah. And he's not a god at all. Monster."
Ajuka's fingers spasmed.
The floating complex formulae in front of him flickered, dissolving like chalk in rain.
"His cultivation system… it's… no," he said, half to himself. "There's no point trying to map it anymore. The variables won't stay in place."
Amaterasu's hand tightened on the rail of the viewing balcony until the wood creaked.
"So," she murmured. "This is the 'Heaven' you meant to build."
Yasaka's fox tails spread behind her like a pale fan. Kunou clutched her sleeve.
"Mama…?" the little fox whispered, eyes wide.
"It's alright," Yasaka quietly spoke, voice low. "He's… on our side."
...
In the sky of the Gap, beneath those twelve palaces, Ren Ming stood.
He looked whole.
No blood. No cracks. His coat fluttered in a wind that didn't exist, the fabric now threaded with faint, shifting lines of Dao script that chased each other along the seams. His hair was tousled, his expression calm.
His eyes, though—
There was depth there now that hadn't been there before. Not just power. Authority.
The kind that didn't come from sitting on a throne someone gave you, but from carrying a Heaven behind your ribs.
His Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique had changed.
It wasn't at grand completion. Not yet. But the difference between early-stage and half-completion of an Immortal Physique was the difference between a boulder and a mountain range. Weight pulsed through his bones, pressed down through his feet into the Gap itself.
Space around him bowed.
The Dimensional Gap, which usually ignored things like "gravity" unless it was in the mood, suddenly remembered what "down" meant wherever Ren stood. Currents that had once flowed freely thickened, moving like syrup.
Great Red's titanic body, used to surfing the emptiness without resistance, felt drag for the first time.
Trihexa's movements grew just a little slower, endless heads pushing against invisible oceans.
The gods felt it too.
Even Shiva, whose domain was destruction, whose dance broke worlds, felt his limbs grow heavy.
Every soul watching, from the humblest second-string exorcist to the oldest god, had the same instinct crash through them.
Run.
They didn't.
They couldn't.
...
Ren flexed his fingers experimentally.
Inside the new Heaven that spanned his twelve Fate Palaces, something clicked. The principles he had wrestled from chaos slid into place.
Biblical God's old world-linking seals, once written into Heaven's System as "who may pass from realm A to realm B via Gate X at Time Y," were now recompiled in his inner Dao. He had taken the rule structure and stripped out the authority names, left only the logic.
He'd taken Infinity's borderless nature and wrapped it around coordinates—when he chose two points, the concept of "distance" between them simply failed to exist.
He'd taken Great Red's Dream trails and traced them out into real paths through chaos: dream-roads that could carry cause-and-effect without breaking.
He'd taken Trihexa's irreversible change and bound it into a final clause:
Roads he closed would not reopen without his consent.
The result was simple in his hands.
A Dao that could step between universes as naturally as breathing—and slam doors behind him, permanently, if he wished.
He rolled his wrist, feeling the universal travel art settle, the way a key feels when it finally slides into the right lock.
"Good," he murmured, voice low, almost amused. "The first version works."
A small, satisfied curve touched his lips.
Then he looked up.
The Twelve Heavens behind him stirred.
"Now," Ren said, voice mild, carrying effortlessly to every corner of the Gap and to the Mirror field. "Shall we start round two?"
His Heaven answered.
The twelve palaces flared—not exploding outwards with light, but deepening. Their presence thickened, like ink soaking more fully into paper.
His Physique, Ancient Ming bloodline, and Immortal Soul Bone resonated in harmony with them, three pillars anchoring the Heaven to flesh. The Immortal Soul Bone pulsed, invisible to eyes but felt by every cultivator-like sense in the room, tracing perfect vectors through reality, lines of least resistance to every target.
His aura surged.
It wasn't a blast.
It was a decision.
Ares, Aten, and Set vanished.
There was no wide swing of an arm. No shouted technique. No flashy name.
One heartbeat, the war gods stood at the fringes of the field, gathered power blazing—Ares with battle-lust overflowing, Aten wrapped in scorching sun-fire, Set shrouded in lethal sandstorms.
The next heartbeat, the weight of Ren's Heaven pressed down on them.
Their god-seats—the roles, the written scripts that said "this concept is under the authority of X"—buckled like rotten wood under a mountain.
Divinities built on borrowed rules, on old myth scripts and pantheon architecture, collapsed.
Bodies and god-seats unraveled together into motes, stripped of name and authority. There wasn't even time to scream. The motes rose once, then were swallowed by the Heaven overhead without a ripple.
In the viewing field, several voices broke at once.
"H-he didn't even…" Rossweisse whispered, face ashen. "He didn't even attack…"
"He judged them," Griselda said softly, fingers tight on her rosary. "And the verdict was 'erase'."
Ren lifted his hand.
Lines of Dao essence fluttered from his fingers, thin as hair, bright as molten stars. They snapped out in several directions at once.
Apophis.
Crom Cruach.
Rizevim.
Hades.
No dramatic explosion swallowed them. No drawn-out struggle of breath weapons and sacred gears, no monologue.
The Petrifying Immortal Light he had forged into his Dao folded over dragons, devil, and underworld king alike, not turning flesh to stone, but turning their existence into a "fixed object" in his law—no longer allowed to participate in the flow of reality.
Bodies froze mid-move, expressions caught half-snarl, half-sneer.
Then Ren snapped his fingers.
The concept "here" no longer applied to them.
They were gone. Not teleported. Erased from the universe.
The roar of Trihexa's apocalypse faltered for the first time.
The difference between nine Fate Palaces and twelve was this.
Even Li Qiye, when he opened his twelve palaces to form his own Heavens in the Water Realm, had simply stood there and let Di Zuo's famed Aphotic Dao crumble under the weight. A Heavenly King whose might could shake an entire era, whose force compared to Viritious Paragons crushing galaxies with every swing, was treated like an unruly junior.
Ren Ming was carrying that same tier of Heavens Creation—and more. Twelve Fate Palaces fused into a personal Heaven, half-completed Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique weighing on every law, Ancient Ming bloodline providing endless vicious efficiency.
In this world, there was no reference point for what that meant.
Trihexa, Great Red, and Shiva moved anyway.
Instinct.
Pride.
Reflex.
They lunged.
Ren didn't look at them.
"Wait your turn," he said.
He stepped.
The Heaven behind him tilted.
Weight multiplied along his stride, turning a simple forward motion into a statement written across the battlefield. The Immortal Soul Bone aligned bones and muscles so that every ounce of force traveled through the shortest possible route.
He punched.
No flowery names. No elaborate stance.
A straight punch, the kind a street brawler might throw.
It carried the full weight of half-completion Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique.
Shiva's ribs caved under it.
The Trishula flew from his hand, spinning end over end into the darkness as the god of destruction's torso imploded, divine bones shattering like cheap ceramic. His form shot backward at near-light speed, carving a tunnel through crushed Gap-space.
Great Red's colossal throat took the next strike.
Dream-realities shattered around the impact like stained glass—the dragon's private worlds of "might-have-beens" and "never-will-bes" cracking and dissolving into motes as they failed to stand between his core and Ren's fist.
The Apocalypse Dragon's body jerked. A line tore across his neck, nearly severing it, red "blood" and dream-stuff spilling out in an impossible mixture.
The third blow hammered into a cluster of Trihexa's heads.
Several simply came off, ripping free in sprays of un-matter. The Beast's endless body convulsed, segments thrashing, dark flares of apocalyptic energy blinking out where the heads had been.
All three titans were sent careening away.
They crashed into the Gap, their impacts rippling through the dimensional fabric like silent thunder, shockwaves warping the far-off boundaries of space.
Ren lowered his fist.
His eyes moved.
Brahma and Vishnu raised defenses on instinct.
Lotus bloomed beneath Brahma's feet, layers of creation spiraling up as golden script burned around his four heads. Vishnu's chakra spun, thousand-armed aura lifting conch and discus and mace, layers of protection snapping into place.
Ren lifted his hand.
A flat palm descended.
Not on their bodies.
On their roles.
His Heaven recognized them: creators, preservers, balancers of cycles. World-maintainers whose authority was woven into the functioning of entire pantheons.
And overruled them.
Their god-seats cracked like cheap glass under a hammer. Scripts that defined "Brahma creates," "Vishnu preserves" snapped, lines of law severed.
Brahma coughed blood, four faces paling in unison as the lotus under his feet withered. Vishnu's chakra sputtered, spinning wildly before collapsing into dead metal, divine implements falling from the air like ordinary weapons.
Both gods slammed into the far "ground" of the Gap, forms broken, hanging on the fraying edge of dissolution.
Typhon and Indra reacted too slowly.
Dao-lines wrapped around them like nooses—Hell Suppressing weight coiling along the Immortal Soul Bone's perfectly chosen path.
Indra's lightning flared once, purple-white fury clawing at the bindings.
Then went out.
Typhon's storms roared, ancient draconic tempests tearing at their cages.
Then stilled.
The two were vaporized from existence—no body, no residue, not even a Mythology entry left behind for future scholars. Just absence where a moment before there had been names.
On a shattered hunk of battlefield, the Hero Faction tried to rise.
Cao Cao's breath sawed in and out of his lungs, vision swimming. Georg's barrier-walls shook. The remaining fighters—Jeanne, Heracles, Leonardo—were already bleeding, battered from earlier phases of the battle.
Ren didn't bother looking directly at them.
He flicked his fingers.
Bones broke.
Not randomly. Cleanly. Knees, elbows, wrists—not killing blows, but specific points that rendered them unable to move, unable to fight, nerves lit up with screaming pain.
Cao Cao found himself pinned to shattered stone by a pressure that wasn't quite gravity, wasn't quite magic.
He forced his head up.
Red eyes, fever-bright with obsession, met Ren's.
"You…" he rasped. "You're—"
"In the way," Ren said calmly.
He simply reached out.
The True Longinus ripped itself from Cao Cao's hand.
The Spear of the Setting Sun tore free from his grip like it had never been his, the haft leaving his palm blistered where the metal dragged across skin.
It flew into Ren's hand.
The watching factions held their breath.
The strongest Holy Spear—the one that had slain the Biblical God, the Longinus that could kill even gods and dragons of Ophis and Great Red's level if fully unleashed—rested in the fingers of someone whose system had never needed a Sacred Gear.
The spear shone with its usual unforgiving light, dense, uncompromising.
Ren's Heaven poured into it.
Twelve Fate Palaces' worth of Dao flowed down the spear's length. Laws taken from Biblical seals, Infinity, Dream, and Apocalypse coiled along its shaft, inscribing new script over old.
The concept shifted.
From "weapon to kill gods" to "spear of judgment that can pierce even things outside this cosmos."
The radiance changed.
Less harsh. More absolute.
Ren twirled it once, feeling the balance—how the Immortal Soul Bone's vectors matched neatly to the spear's new nature.
"Better," he said.
He glanced down at Cao Cao.
"To be honest," he added, tone conversational, "you're a bit interesting, so killing you here would be a waste."
Cao Cao's lips twisted, half bitter, half exhilarated, even as blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.
Ren's fingers moved.
Bones cracked again—not enough to worsen the injuries fatally, just efficiently re-breaking what needed to be reset to keep them from fighting.
"Take a nice rest here," Ren said, smile crooked. "I'll finish this up."
He turned away from them as if they no longer existed.
His attention returned to the ones that still mattered.
Ophis.
Great Red.
Shiva.
Trihexa.
He smiled first at Ophis.
Her true form loomed in the distance—a pale, enormous serpent biting its own tail, Infinity coiling eternally. Most of the time, she shrank down into a childlike humanoid, but here, in the Gap, the dragon bared more of herself.
She was pinned under his Heaven.
Infinity, forced to acknowledge "weight," stuttered in her presence. Her endless, borderless aura found itself constrained, ringed by the faint outline of a circle drawn by somebody else's hand.
"Sorry about the rough treatment, sweetheart," Ren said. His voice, for the first time since the Heavens appeared, softened. "Consider this… remedial education."
"Remedial…?" Ophis echoed, head tilting minutely. Her voice was flat, but under the blankness was confusion.
"You've spent too long as an idea," Ren said. "Infinity. Silence. No self. That's just another kind of cage."
He hefted the spear once, then let it rest for the moment, floating at his side.
"I'm going to knock you around until you feel like a person again."
He didn't hide the affection in his tone.
He looked at Great Red and Shiva next, expression flattening.
"You two," he said. "I don't care if you live or die. You made your choices. If you want to keep existing in the era I'm building, that's on your performance."
Great Red's eyes narrowed, the dragon's massive form coiling tighter, dream-worlds swirling around him like a cloak.
Shiva wiped blood from his mouth, the bruise on his chest where Ren's fist had landed already fading under his own divinity. He stood straight despite the damage, three eyes burning bright.
Trihexa writhed in the distance, chunks missing, still reforming. The Beast had no words. Only a hunger older than this universe.
"You," Ren said, turning his gaze on it. "You're just a bad habit this universe never kicked."
He lifted the reforged True Longinus and leveled it at Shiva.
The god of destruction drew in everything.
Dance, mantra, mudra—concepts encoded in his being flared. He compressed his aspect of Destruction into a single, blinding point, an attack that legends would have called "world-ending."
In the Dimensional Gap, where there was nothing to protect, it should have carved scars into the fundamental emptiness itself.
Ren thrust.
The True Longinus pierced through the attack like a needle through wet paper.
The compressed destruction shuddered, its concept unraveling under the combined authority of Biblical spear, Ren's Heaven, and his universal Dao. The spear drank in the destructive principle, not as damage, but as data—another line in its new definition.
The tip stopped a breath from Shiva's heart.
For a moment, time thinned around them.
Shiva's three eyes widened—not with fear, but with fierce, almost amused acceptance.
"So this is… your destruction," he murmured, feeling his god-seat cracking behind him, Destruction's authority recontextualized under a new Heaven. "Heh. Not… bad…"
Ren flicked his wrist.
Shiva's body launched backward at light speed, divine form unraveling into motes that streaked away, his role dissolving. The god vanished into the distance, authority collapsing, going somewhere beyond the reach of this battle.
Ren was already turning.
The spear swept sideways.
It carved through Great Red's Dream.
Not flesh, at first. Not scales. Through the layered worlds the dragon wore like armor—memories, possible futures, imaginary playgrounds of "zoom zoom iyaaan."
Worlds shattered silently.
One moment, a dream where Great Red surfed a universe made of breasts and snacks—Issei's fault—existed.
The next, the spear passed through that layer, and it didn't.
The weapon bit into the dragon's actual body next.
The Apocalypse Dragon's massive frame almost split in half, a jagged line tearing from neck to stomach. Dream-blood spilled out, glowing red and gold, dissolving into the Gap as it fell.
Ren let him fall.
He didn't care about finishing Great Red yet. The dragon's dream could be repurposed later.
His next step took him to Ophis.
This time, he didn't use the spear.
He raised his fist.
"Sorry, sweetheart," he said softly. "This might sting."
He punched Infinity.
The impact didn't make a sound.
It made absence.
Where his fist met the concept of "no boundaries," something deep inside Ophis shuddered. Her aura of endless, unbothered existence, of apathy cold enough to freeze suns, rang like a bell struck straight through the core.
Her dragon body convulsed.
The dimension around them flexed as her concept tried to remain infinite while being forced to acknowledge "limit" for a heartbeat.
Deep inside the ouroboros loop, beneath titles like "Ouroboros Dragon," "Infinite Dragon God," something older shifted.
The part that had once looked at the void and chosen to be a dragon.
Ophis' black eyes widened.
"…Ah," she breathed. For the first time, her voice carried something—thin, raw emotion. "It… hurts. I… don't… like it…"
"I know," Ren said.
His tone was gentle, almost pitying.
"Humans don't like it either. That's why they grow."
His Heaven pressed down.
Infinity, forced into a finite container, stuttered. Her massive dragon form compressed, coiled tighter and tighter, until she could barely move. Being forced to feel "small" made her aura flicker.
In the viewing field, those who knew Ophis—Rias and her peerage, Vali's team, Azazel—watched the unthinkable.
The Dragon God who had once been more terrifying than Biblical God, who had never cared about anything but the Dimensional Gap and Great Red, flinched..
Before anyone could process that—
Trihexa lunged.
Enough of its heads had regrown.
Enough claws had reformed.
The Apocalyptic Beast threw itself at Ren, all hatred and ending and gnashing maws. It was less a body and more a moving wound in reality, chewing through every law that got too close.
Ren snorted.
"Persistent," he said.
The twelve Fate Palaces flared.
Power poured down.
Crushing weight to match the Beast's ranking in this cosmos. Dao-essence like threads of blade-light. Primordial Trees within his Heaven shook, Dao Fruits of principles tumbling free.
Under that Heaven-light, Trihexa's endless body was laid bare.
Not just flesh.
Concept. Echoless ruin. The script in the Apocalypse that had once read, "This is the Beast that will end everything."
Ren raised his hand.
"Sit," he said.
Hell Suppressing weight multiplied.
The command wasn't loud. It was just absolute.
Trihexa's body hit the "ground."
Heads slammed flat. Claws dug trenches into the Gap's fabric. The roar that had been constant since its appearance cut off mid-note, strangled under pressure.
Ren began to cut.
The reworked True Longinus, his Dao-lines, and Petrifying Immortal Light moved together like a well-practiced team.
Each time he slashed, a chunk of Trihexa came away—whole segments of its body, chains of heads, coils of torso, clusters of limbs. The moment a chunk separated, the Petrifying Immortal Light flared, not turning it to ordinary stone, but to a "fixed concept"—immovable, unchanging.
Those petrified masses were hurled upward, into his Heaven.
They slammed into place along the far corners of his new universal travel matrix, shackled there as anchors. Each became a sealed "node" in his network, a piece of Apocalypse bound into roads between universes.
Trihexa tried to reform.
Authority strained.
It pulled at its severed pieces, trying to drag them back.
The petrified segments refused.
Ren's eyes narrowed.
"Stay," he said coldly.
The last head snapped, frozen mid-snarl, and vanished into the Heaven.
He could have annihilated the Beast utterly.
But a creature whose existence had once forced Biblical God to spend everything to seal it—the Emperor Beast of Apocalypse, the "Imperial Beast" whose rank was beyond normal dragons—had uses.
Leaving it as fuel, as anchor and battery, was more efficient.
In the viewing field, a shudder went through every spine.
"For something on par with Great Red and Ophis to be…" Odin began, then trailed off, head shaking. "Beyond nightmare."
Asia cried again, but now she didn't know whether it was fear, awe, or simple emotional overload.
Rias' legs felt weak.
Sona's analytical mind had tapped out several minutes ago; numbers and graphs had been replaced with a simple, looping thought: What are we standing next to?
Serafall, idol smile gone, simply stared.
Even Sirzechs, the kind devil brother who had once walked into battle as the Crimson Satan—the monster of his own era—swallowed.
"…We are," he said slowly, "very, very fortunate he likes us."