★142
ASTERI'S POV
When sight returned, it came in blurred shapes behind a frozen veil. Ice encased me completely, its cold pressing into my bones.
I blinked, once, a thin crack forming around the ice. Then another. My aura surged without restraint, violent and restless, and the ice began to fracture around me. I felt the world itself respond, its energy tugged towards me, drawn in like breath after drowning.
"How stubborn."
Velzard turned, certain she had finished me, already walking away from what she believed was a victory.
Back there had felt endless—an eternity of silence and suffocation. Yet, as sensation returned fully, I realised the truth. I had only been gone for forty-five seconds.
The ice shattered and melted in a violent release. Energy flooded into me faster than my body could contain, spilling over, swelling, demanding form.
(Energy the Existential Force not magical energy/ celestial energy.)
I didn't need to stand, the moment Energy was flowing into my body, I vanished, completely ejected form the battlefield. Almost instantly, a new vessel took shape, deployed with quiet inevitability, as if this moment had always been waiting to happen.
"Useless tricks."
With Antares duplicating the bonded Ether-Essen particle, he supplied it to my body for testing.
Silver dust gathered around my fist, drawn together by instinct more than control. It condensed and hardened an instant before impact. When the punch landed, her thin barrier of ice shattered like glass under a hammer, fragments scattering into the air as the force carried through into her body and sent her hurtling away.
Pain was irrelevant for this new vessel. I was a test subject, modified with numerous immunities.
The technique was new and unrefined. It felt too raw and different compared to when I used it on Magos and the Balance Dragons.
My fist didn't survive the strike. It broke apart under its own power, the silver dust dispersing with the same violence it had delivered.
In the distance, Velzard tumbled across the frozen ground, a sharp gasp torn from her lungs. Blood left her lips.
'As expected of my True Body. I was only struggling because I was using a vessel. It's been less than ten seconds, and he has already made progress.'
"You bastard!"
She approached at maximum speed. Aether Move carried me forward in a flash, and my foot drove straight into her temple. The impact landed clean.
The force of the kick launched her across the world itself, her body hurled beyond the horizon in an instant, sent flying by the sheer weight behind that single strike.
The backlash hit me as usual. My leg couldn't withstand what I'd unleashed. Bone splintered, muscle tore, and the limb gave out beneath me, destroyed by the same impact I'd delivered
(With Artificial World gone, the space left is the world.)
'With Aether Move, I can now move in unison with both Energy and Ether. How was I able to use this move when I was a young star? That's weird.'
It was, but now isn't the time to think too deeply.
Enraged, Velzard let her aura surge. Frost swallowed the surroundings in an instant, energy, spiritrons, even matter itself seized and stilled. Unlike in the Suspended World, nothing merely paused; everything crystallised, locked into ice as though existence had been preserved in a frozen moment.
But I had already stepped beyond this plane. Whatever bound this world no longer bound me.
Ice condensed before her, hardening and twisting until it formed a spear. She hurled it without hesitation. I met it head-on, pouring everything I had into a single strike.
My bare hand collided with the frozen construct and shattered it apart, the explosion of frost scattering into nothing. The backlash tore through my arm from hand to shoulder, bones shrieking under the strain, muscles splitting as the power rebounded through me.
Her aura thickened, swallowing her whole. It gathered like a storm on the verge of breaking, vast and monstrous, pressing down on the world with suffocating weight.
I was losing, so a new vessel deployed, forcing itself into existence and holding the two of them at bay for a fleeting moment.
The instant I stepped into that warped world, Feldway struck without hesitation, his attack already descending as though he'd been waiting for that exact heartbeat.
"Chrono Saltation."
Yes, the same technique he used on Sai and Velgrynd. A forced spacetime transport.
Chrono Saltation doesn't teleport you. It banishes you, hurling your entire existence across time, space, and every world in between, until you're stranded somewhere on the far side of reality.
Normally, stacking a Time Stop over another Time Stop will only increase the effectiveness of the Time Stop. But if you keep pouring power into it, something breaks.
Time starts grinding against the suspended world like two gears forced together. And when that friction hits the target, all the flow of time crashes into them alone, violently and unstoppable while everything around stays frozen.
The stronger the distortion, the farther the victim gets flung. Some end up erased away… some get thrown to the literal edge of existence, where time and space finally die out. If you're not careful, even those linked to the target by their soul can be dragged along for the ride.
And that's how I'll end up exiled, kicked straight out of reality.
Feldway thought he'd caught me off guard, but no. I'd been waiting for him to use this Skill all along, and he took the bait perfectly.
Just as the system prepared to eject me, I activated Space-Time Art: Threadwalking and waited. The effect was immediate as everything around me collapsed, blast out of reality itself. I countered almost instantly.
Seizing the final strand of time before the End of Time and Space itself. I jumped from that last thread of time back to my previous location. The movement was indeed instantaneous, faster than teleportation by far, yet inferior to Aether Move.
Feldway's eyes widened, the shock on his face splintering into something far more fragile.
"I love that look on your face. See you…"
I smirked and gave a small, careless wave before disappearing—right on time for the battle to end.
"Heh?"
My other body began to crumble the moment the signal went out, edges breaking into drifting dust as though I'd always been meant to scatter. The cost had finally come due.
Still, I'd done my part. I'd held her at bay long enough, and the others had succeeded in carrying the Artificial World to where it needed to be.
Just before my vision faded, I saw it clearly. Feldway understood.
The calculation behind his eyes snapped into place, and for the first time, composure abandoned him. His pupils shrank, breath catching mid-step. It was the cold, dawning realisation that he was too late—that everything had already slipped beyond his control.
His eyes staring up in the heavens, what was it he saw?
FELDWAY'S POV
My eyes opened the moment his body began crumbling and the exterior became present to me on purpose. He was constantly masking the space into something friendly so none of us could've detected what's outside while he fought hard against Velzard.
As the curtains of space fell, I reached beyond the veil only to feel it. Something was watching us.
An alien presence, vast and unknowable, pressed against reality watching us. It wasn't just divine, it was beyond Divinity. A god above gods, a greater Deity had descended.
Velzard unleashed her draconic form, scales glistening like frozen stars, yet even she stood frozen. Her crystalline eyes were locked, drawn to the pure, glowing azure stare descending upon us... pure, patient, and all-seeing.
THIRD POV
'This was no ordinary being, it was a true god. Their presence didn't merely loom over the battlefield; it pierced through it, as if the war itself was irrelevant.
They had come not to interfere, but to observe. Not the outcome of this conflict, but us. Mortals who dared to challenge a god.
At that moment, I didn't know who they were, only that their gaze was absolute. But now... now I understand.'
'Stars, how long does your unending dominance last? It's almost identical to Him.'
Feldway's teeth ground together, awe and dread tangled in his chest, tightening with every passing second.
'You know no limits...'
The realisation settled heavy and inescapable, pressing against their thoughts until only one name remained.
Antares.
They both reached it at the same time.
The veil now transparent, reveal the entity that stood above the stars themselves.
Long strands of white hair shimmered like woven starlight against the void, while distant celestial bodies aligned in a pattern too precise to be a coincidence. This was no ordinary cosmos, it was a design, deliberate and divine.
"You're strong."
It spoke in a quiet, deliberate tone, yet defined in tone.
"But it's over. Witness the End of Creation."
It spoke.
From its vantage point, the world folded inward. Reality itself drew tight, compressing as though an unseen hand were closing around it.
Space warped, layers of existence buckling and collapsing into one another until everything converged on a single point.
The weight of convergence was compressed into a singularity to the point of nothingness, not void or absence but something else.
The pressure was absolute. The world closed in and crushed the two of them beneath the weight of its own existence.
The point of the attack wasn't the world's destruction, but rather those trapped within are transported to the point where the Creation has ended.
This doesn't mean the world has ended. It meant they were sent to where Creation itself had ended. No space, no time, no life, no death, no existence and non-existence.
A place before the narrative of Creation. Even Antares who just created this form of attack haven't fully mastered or understood it.
""It's full of loopholes. If you can find even one, you might come back. Now then… let me continue my research."
He murmured it to himself more than anyone else, as though the words needed to be heard aloud to stay real.
Then he closed his eyes, shutting out the ruined space before him. Silence settled in, and his thoughts sank back into their endless calculations, already searching for the next answer.
To be continued...