As the golden figure on the screen—the Emperor worshipped by trillions as their savior yet destined to become the final Destroyer of their civilization—was slowly swallowed by the backdrop of the Golden Throne, a philosophical chill deeper and more suffocating than mere horror enveloped every watching World.
This was no longer a story of "wrong choices."
It was a tragedy of "no choice at all."
This was no longer the Deliverer fighting the Destroyer.
The Deliverer himself was the slowly gestating, most terrifying egg of ruin.
Most desperate of all, everyone was forced to admit one fact: this egg of ruin, this road to hell, was already the only visible and most hopeful future for human civilization in a cosmos soaked by Chaos.
Confronted by a darkness heavy enough to crush gods, Guardians from different Universes sank into a contemplation that shook the very foundations of their existence.
---
[Sky-Blade VII · Angel Conference Hall]
Holy Keisha, who always stood above all as the "supreme prime god of the known Universe," fell into prolonged silence for the first time.
She did not, as usual, casually label this Universe "barbaric" or "backward."
Because her Sacred Knowledge Treasury—capable of discerning everything in the known cosmos—returned a deduction she could not accept when faced with the concept of the "dark king."
"Keisha."
Hexi's voice carried a barely perceptible tremor; the data streams before her were in Chaos.
"I can't understand it. To fight Chaos, the Emperor built an extreme Order—its underlying logic is similar to your 'Order of Justice.'"
"But… why does his 'Order' ultimately give birth to a god more terrifying than 'Chaos' itself?"
"It doesn't make sense."
"The end of Order should be eternal peace, not… a tyrant who devours everything."
"No, Hexi. You're wrong."
Keisha's voice was profoundly low; for the first time, the arrogance of a god receded, revealing a rare, scholar-like gravity.
"It… makes sense."
"Only, its logic is built upon a deeper cosmic law we can neither understand nor accept."
Keisha slowly lifted her head, her gaze seeming to pierce through space-time to the essence of that dark Universe.
"In our Universe, Order is a weapon against Chaos."
"But in that Universe, 'Order' and 'Chaos' are merely two faces of the same coin—they share the same origin."
"The more you pursue ultimate Order, the more energy you store for ultimate Chaos."
"The Emperor… did nothing wrong; on the contrary, he did everything right."
"He pushed the power of Order to its extreme; therefore, he must inevitably become the… ultimate incarnation of Chaotic force within the quadrant of 'Order.'"
"If…"
A hint of a hypothesis even she herself feared flashed in Keisha's eyes.
"If I were in that Universe, unifying the galaxy with my 'Justice Order,' then the one who ultimately sits upon the throne of the 'dark king' might not be the Emperor, but me—Holy Keisha."
This conclusion plunged the entire Angel Conference Hall into deathly silence.
[Demon Nebula · Demon Wings]
Morgana did not laugh; she even forgot her favorite curse, "bitch."
She simply stared blankly at the screen, the cigar in her mouth long extinguished, ash fallen all over her.
"Fuck…"
Only after a long while did she exhale that word, hoarse and filled with unprecedented bewilderment.
Ato asked in confusion, "My Queen, isn't this exactly the fate of dictatorship you always talked about?"
"That Emperor guy screwed himself—shouldn't you be happy?"
"Happy? Happy my ass!" Morgana slammed the table, yet there was no anger in the act—only a powerlessness born of deep shock.
"What I pursue is degenerate freedom! Doing whatever the hell I want!"
"But that Universe… it's telling me the end of 'freedom' is 'enslavement.'"
"Look carefully! What did the Emperor want? To free humanity from enslavement by those four bastard Chaos Gods and give them real freedom!"
"What a kick-ass ideal—exactly my style!"
"But the result? To achieve this 'freedom,' he turned himself into the fifth and mightiest slaver of all!"
"Goddamn it… in that cosmos, even the act of 'seeking freedom' itself is just laying bricks for the future slaver."
For the first time, Morgana felt fear.
Not of Keisha, not of Karl, but a soul-deep dread of the very laws of the Universe.
"In this hellhole, you have no choice."
"Either be Chaos's dog… or become the maddest hound that devours everyone."
"And this… is somehow still the best fucking outcome."
[Styx Galaxy · Death Song Academy]
"No… not the Void…"
Karl, the ultimate scholar of the Void, for the first time revealed a hint of near-panic from his ageless calm.
He had always believed the ultimate form of the Universe was the "Void": the dissipation of matter, the end of consciousness, the absolute eternal silence—an icy, perfect beauty in his eyes.
But the existence of the "dark king" showed him a possibility even more terrible than the Void.
"It is not 'nothingness,' but a twisted 'everything.'"
Karl muttered to himself; the Great Clock flickered madly before him, yet it could not compute a result.
"The Void is the end of all consciousness. And this 'dark king' is the 'unification' of all consciousness."
"Not Death, but an eternal, selfless 'living.'"
"Every soul in the Universe will become a single thought in His mind, a single cell—immortal yet never free, forever trapped within His will."
"A kind of... living, thinking, love-filled (twisted)... hell."
For the first time Karl sensed a 'ultimate fear' beyond his theories. It was not Death, but an eternal, undying enslavement.
---
[Justice League · Watchtower]
"No... I don't believe it."
Superman—his voice low and stubborn.
But what he rejected was no longer the Emperor's choice; it was the very fabric of this Universe.
"I can't believe in a Universe whose fundamental law is despair."
"I can't believe 'hope' itself is a trap. There must—there must be something we haven't seen."
He looked toward Batman, a silent plea in his eyes.
"Bruce, tell me something's been overlooked."
Batman was silent a long while. On the holoscreen before him, a tangled web of cause and effect between the Emperor and the dark king. At last he spoke in a voice hoarse beyond measure:
"Clark, the problem is... I've analyzed every variable. The Emperor's plan is genuinely the optimal move in this game."
"In that Universe, he chose the only path that lets the species called 'human' survive in some form."
"His error lay not in the plan, but in attempting to solve an unsolvable equation."
"That Universe... its rules are written so the endpoint is nothing but ruin."
"And the Emperor merely picked the less terrible of two forms of destruction."
For the first time, Batman's voice carried a note of powerlessness.
"And this 'less terrible' ending... is exactly what we're seeing now."
"In our myths, hero and monster are separate."
Wonder Woman Diana's voice brimmed with sorrow.
"The hero slays the monster and saves the people. But in that Universe's myth, the hero's fate is to become the very monster he sought to defeat."
"The braver and stronger he is, the more terrifying the monster he spawns."
"This isn't a battle; it's a doomed tug-of-war with destiny."
"So the one road left is to turn oneself into the final darkness?"
Superman murmured, and for the first time a long shadow fell across the eternal sunlight of his faith.
"Not quite, big guy."
A flippant voice drifted from the corner, reeking of cheap cigarettes.
John Constantine exhaled a lazy smoke ring, eyes that had seen a thousand cons now offering the crudest explanation of all.
"You're all overthinking it, mates."
"Picture the whole thing as a Universe-spanning tabletop RPG and it gets simple."
He flicked ash and curled a mocking smile.
"At the board sit four old-timers: the pustulent blob, the muscle-brained chopper, the gender-bending perv, and the back-stabbing schemer. They've played eons and they're bored."
"Then a new player called the Emperor wants a seat."
"But he won't be a pawn—too proud—he wants to flip the table and start his own game."
"That 'Webway Project' of his? He's building his own board."
Constantine took a long drag and slowly exhaled.
"But here's the snag."
"Until the new board's ready, you still play on the old one."
"To win, to gain power, the Emperor threw himself into the role."
"He began acting the 'Deliverer,' the 'Emperor of Mankind,' an omnipotent god."
"He played it too well, for far too long..."
Cigarette pinched between two fingers, he pointed at the screen, eyes gleaming with the joy of watching a fellow grifter exposed.
...until he forgot he was only a player."
"He started believing he was the shiniest, most important king-piece on the board."
"The moment a player thinks he's a piece, he's lost—because pieces must obey the rules of the board."
"The four veterans only had to watch."
"They knew the rules were baked in: any piece powerful enough to sway the game would inevitably become the fifth player—the so-called 'dark king.'"
"It wasn't his choice; it was a preset 'hidden class.' Every victory and conquest merely farmed experience so he could switch jobs faster."
Constantine stubbed out the cigarette with a contemptuous snort.
"He sank so deep into the role he turned his own life into the character sheet."
"And that, my friends, is the blackest joke of the whole damned story."