"¡BOOM!"
The moment the bone sword and the fist collided, a purple-crimson explosion occurred, generating shock waves that annihilated everything in their path.
Despite the Neo-Demon charging the full power of his body into that sword strike, the King in Yellow's physical might reached such a monstrous level that he only required his right hand to stop it.
At the exact moment when the fist and sword clashed, the King in Yellow fired his left fist toward the Neo-Demon's head.
Zatiel's eyes widened as a punch with enough force to blow his head up was about to land, but in the last second, he vanished, only to reappear holding another bone sword behind the King in Yellow.
The King in Yellow felt how the bone sword aimed to cut his back again, but instead of dodging it, he allowed the wound before twisting his body and striking the Neo-Demon with the back of his fist.
Another large laceration appeared in the King in Yellow's back, infected by rebirth flames that potentiated the purple matrix that penetrated his cells.
As for Zatiel, that fist strike sent him flying away, clashing with multiple stars on his path, and the karma threads were enhanced, piercing deeper into his body.
Crimson fire already filled his circulatory system, burning him from the inside out and even affecting his bloodline.
The moment the Neo-Demon regained control over his body, he saw how a giant fist was coming down to destroy him. His enemy chased after him and was ready to fire a deadly attack.
The Neo-Demon flashed toward a bone sword more than one thousand kilometers away and managed to save himself in the last instant.
Once he got a second to think, Zatiel activated the red ring in his hand, making a stream of blood vitality, life force, and soul force enter his body and Inner Law Dimension.
For the mission into Saint City, he prepared two great trump cards, the first being the ring with the Space Origin Essence that should have teleported him to a secure location in case of danger.
The second trump card was a red ring in which he deposited part of his bloodline, life force, and soul force, which he extracted over the last two years. Its goal was to serve as a reservoir of those essences so that he could take them back in case of catastrophic damage.
Although the red ring contained a crimson sphere the size of a moon, Zatiel calculated that he would be lucky if it lasted more than five minutes at the speed he was using it.
Wrath and madness plagued his mind, making any form of coherent thought harder by the second, but the Neo-Demon managed to specify a goal.
'I NEED TO KILL HIM FAST!'
Luckily for the Neo-Demon, the King in Yellow had the same goal. He was doing his best to keep the rebirth fire at bay, but it wouldn't be long before his battle power began to decrease due to the damage to his vital organs.
Zatiel and the King in Yellow stared at each other for a second before making their energy explode and flashing toward the other, ready to unleash everything they had.
Purple and crimson explosions shone for hundreds of thousands of kilometers as the duo destroyed everything around them.
The King in Yellow constantly switched between the flute horror to increase the madness affecting Zatiel and the elephant-like Great Old One to improve his physical might.
Zatiel pushed his speed to the peak, reaching a level that could equal the incarnation of the Rank 7 Shooting Star Archangel he fought in the Beta Heavenly World!
He also employed the power of his Mind Force and Rebirth Eye. Direct soul attacks would not be useful against the King in Yellow, so Zatiel chose to trick his senses, weakening his reaction time and reflexes.
More and more wounds appeared in the duo, with the rebirth fire and purple matrix already invading the King in Yellow's brain and the karma flames overflowing the Neo-Demon's body and mind.
Instead of their momentum withering due to their life-threatening wounds, it only kept increasing each time they collided.
Another explosion that shattered space-time occurred as the duo collided. Instead of following it with another deadly attack like before, Zatiel and the King in Yellow put some distance between them.
The duo roared as they began to burn their energy, blood, and soul to fire their final attack!
"Azathoth, The First Old One, Sleeping Chaos, Origin of All Madness, Universal Dreamer, I the King in Yellow, summon your power!" The King in Yellow performed multiple hand seals as he pronounced those words, and copious amounts of eldritch aura emerged from him.
"From Death to Life, from Destruction to Creation, with Soul as the bridge, may Rebirth change falsehood into reality!"
The armor covering the Neo-Demon transformed into a giant Rebirth Eye, with a black hole as the pupil.
Zatiel inscribed a new seal into the All-Devouring Domain, using Life Origin Essence, making the black hole invert its rotation.
As the All-Devouring Domain turned white and the eldritch aura condensed, two phantoms of entities that stood above the Primarch level began to manifest!
One of them was an amorphous creature resembling a mass of tentacles with billions of eyes and howling faces. It was so immense that it seemed capable of equaling the Infinite Layers of the Abyss in size.
The other was a humanoid bathed in flaming shadows, and the only thing visible about him was his red eyes. He seemed to personify the concept of the end, the final point that everything must eventually reach.
They were only illusions, but their auras made it clear they were entities that already took a step above Rank 9!
Zatiel extended his right arm, which began to mutate and transform into that of the monsters behind him.
Using the power to change illusion into reality, the Neo-Demon replaced his right arm with the one belonging to the Incarnation of Death and Destruction's phantom!
Right now, Zatiel's right arm contained a power that once sought to decompose the universe into its primal essence before assimilating it.
Light, heat, electricity, protons, electrons, everything around that right arm ceased to exist!
The King in Yellow could not hide his surprise when he saw the phantom behind Zatiel, and enlightenment filled his eyes as he found the answer to many of the questions that had bothered him for a long time.
However, he did not say a word and focused on the fight as anything else was meaningless at this point. His eyes glowed as his right arm exploded, and a mass of tentacles like the ones of the eldritch phantom emerged from his body.
Following the King in Yellow's command, the tentacles began to assemble, and soon, they formed an eldritch arm that unleashed an aura capable of corrupting the laws!
That was like a virus, capable of infecting the host and changing it so it could replicate with more ease.
None of them said anything as they flashed forward, ready to deploy their final attack.
The giant Rebirth Eye crumbled as Myriad once again fused with Zatiel, covering him with powerful armor that enhanced his body.
The King in Yellow made a seal with his left hand, summoning the elephant-like horror again to improve his physical might further.
Silence reigned for a second as a force that sought to decompose and assimilate everything collided with one capable of corrupting and devouring all existence.
"¡BOOM!"
From the explosion, arcs of power capable of twisting the laws extended in every direction. The Neo-Demon Ancestor and the King in Yellow sought to overcome their enemy and give the final blow.
In the end, it was the eldritch arm, the one that began to crumble first!
"DIE!" Zatiel roared with all his power, as madness and chaos had already deprived him of his ability to think, and he pulled his right arm forward, destroying the mass of tentacles before plunging it into the King in Yellow's chest!
Shock filled the King in Yellow's face when he saw that. He had lost, and his ultimate power was proven inferior to that of the enemy.
The power in that right arm was about to erase him, and there was nothing he could do to stop his demise.
A smile appeared on the Neo-Demon's face as he felt his arm piercing the enemy's heart, but then a sense of danger so immense appeared that it pushed away his madness and allowed him to regain sanity for a second.
At that moment, the Neo-Demon saw how all but one karma thread vanished. It was the one connecting him and the King in Yellow.
Zatiel saw the King in Yellow smiling as he was about to die and heard four words.
"LET US DIE TOGETHER!"
The King in Yellow channeled his Primordial Essence into that final karma thread and fused it into the Neo-Demon, before crumbling into nothingness.
"AHHHH!" A scream of unbearable agony came out of the Neo-Demon as he experienced a pain that went beyond what he believed possible.
