Varian's sword moved in a predictable trajectory. Neither fast nor agile, the attack should have appeared silly unnerved the hell out of the two powerhouses.
Icarus blurred, shooting up above the clouds and hiding from the slash. Immortal shielded himself with his arms with a stiff expression.
The sword completed the arc but no aura came out of it.
"Huh?"
Immortal on the ground and Icarus in the sky both looked at the sword in astonishment.
It's already very suspicious for the weapon to give off such a dangerous feeling. But now it all turned out be a farce?
"What the fuck were you expecting?" Varian kicked a stone and it hit Immortal in the face.
Clutching his broken nose, the child of the empires blinked at Varian in confusion.
With all that power the weapon exuded, he was expecting a world shattering attack that would instantly kill a peak rank 9.
Pointing to the enemy in the sky, Varian yelled. "Icarus went crazy and was about to kill you. I distracted him enough. Let's start attacking already!"
"Huh? Ah? Yes, yes." The holy squad came to their senses and launched their attacks.
Isadora followed.
Immortal clenched his fists, barely holding himself from yelling at Varian.
How dare…How dare this mortal humiliate him like that?!
These people saw him afraid. It's shameful! The ruler of the universe, the perfect being who would reach the realm of godhood was scared by a puny mortal!
Immortal clenched his jaw and forced himself to turn to the enemy in the sky.
Everything had to wait until this dangerous enemy got killed.
With a flash of red, Immortal soared into the sky and joined the battle.
The already intense battle was kicked up a notch higher and Icarus, for the first time, was unilaterally suppressed.
He tried to fight back. He really did.
The man used his experience as a divine ranker to create intricate fields of Order, enforcing strange rules that would've knocked out most warriors.
The hammer warrior started to feel a rebound of his attacks and started to accumulate injuries caused by his own strength.
The old witch's 'senses' were blinded by a new 'rule' and she had a hard time telling apart Immortal from Icarus.
Only half of her attacks reached the enemy and the other half went to the ally.
The space wizard faced the worst amongst the three. For every one unit of space he cracked, the aura in his body was sucked out violently, destabilizing two units of space around it.
So, the more he manipulated space, the more unstable it got, forcing him to use even more space power and pushing him into a deadly spiral.
Isadora faced relatively less difficult obstacle. All the attacks of darkness were met with the power of 'Order' which neutralized the explosive energy and coalesced the violent power into a stable, stationary one.
Immortal remained the biggest focus and multiple rules were forced onto him.
Be it a rule that caused his aura to leak out, slowing his recovery or a rule that caused him to miss three out of every ten attacks or even the rule that abruptly created patches of metal on his skin, which would pull the attacks of the allies and use it to attack him.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The sky was a spectacle of brilliant fireworks, explosions and conical shockwaves.
Even though they were fighting far above the ground, literally thousands of miles high in a very enchanced region that could easily withstand the power of a rank 8, the land began to shake.
Like someone was turning the land into a drum and beating it, the land shook. And as it did, the small stones, dust particles and pebbles on it began to rise.
Slowly at first and then suddenly, at a rapid pace. They all flew into the sky and joined the black vortex which sealed the original body of the devil.
Gaa! Gaa! Gaa!
Primeival sounds akin to the roars of an ancient beast began to leak from the tornado.
With everyone far up in the sky, Varian was the only one who ended up hearing them up close.
And just that caused his senses to dizzy.
'Come! Close! Let me out!'
His eyes began to bleed, clouding his vision red.
Before he could raise his hands to wipe away blood that began to stream down like tears, the skin on his hand began to peel off like it's some onion, revealing the red flesh and the veins in which hot blood was flowing.
An invisible hand gripped Varian's beating heart and a sharp nail grazed his neck, splitting his skin and forming a thin red line.
'Come closer, my child.'
A voice that was as holy as it was devilish whispered. It's a combination that should've never been possible. But it was undeniable that the entity was a god despite being a devil.
'The world needs balance. Life has grown out of control. Death is the only answer. Come. Come closer, my child.'
Varian raised his foot.
'The creation is destined to end. Keeping it running any longer goes against the will of the creator. So, come.'
The devilish voice disappeared and was replaced by something far more serene, godly and authoritative.
A sensation far greater than anything he had ever experienced zoomed in on his soul.
In that brief moment which Varian barely registered, he found himself in front of the creation.
Not the world of Eternal Empress but the universe itself.
As it zoomed out at a rapid pace, he found himself shrinking and shrinking to the point he could no longer find himself.
He saw the universe in its entirey—a dark sphere which had countless white dots in it.
…He saw something moving beyond that darkness.
"Haaa!"
Varian came to his senses, stopping his hand that was about to touch the black tornado.
"Haa! Huff! Huff!"
He stumbled back and collapsed, staring blankly at his surroundings.
'Come! Come closer, my child!'
'The creation needs your help.'
'You are the chosen one!'
It was the devilish voice that he heard at the start.
But no, that voice he heard in the middle…this wasn't it. It's something different.
It's not a fake god built by Fabricator in his Paradise, it can't be.
It's something…something…
"Who was that? Who? It's not the devil! Who the fuck was that?"
Varian looked around, screaming like a madman.
The fighting continued in the sky and the forbidden lands seemed fine despite the intense battle.
Yet, it felt like the world was about to end at any moment and that there's nothing he could do about it.
The feeling of helplesness he felt earlier when his insignificance was revealed—lower than a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe—as an inconsequential being that would be lost in the magnificience of creation…it engulfed him once again.
Varian clutched his head and faced the ground, tears streaming down his face uncontrollably for reasons he could not even comprehend.
The emotions in his heart were beyond turmoil. It was like someone cranked the emotion numbers to infinity and then crashed them to zero.
The fluctuation was so intense that Isadora, who could always faintly feel Varian's emotions due to their link, lost control of her power all of a sudden and was hit by an attack.
She crashed to the ground and ignoring her injuries, she clutched her head as feelings she couldn't even fathom overwhelmed her mind.
"Arghhh!"
Screaming as he punched the ground, Varian used the power of soul to turn off all his emotions.
"Haa! Haa! Haa!"
Isadora too recovered and looked down blankly at her trembling hands.
She didn't have the luxury to stop. So, she rejoined the battle right away.
But Varian remained, ignoring the whispers of the devil.
The whispers that initially caused him to bleed just due to their presence no longer felt threatening.
They still hurt his body, they still caused him to bleed and created a pool of blood where he was sitting.
They might kill him if he couldn't fight back.
And yet, there was something soothing about this power.
It was far stronger than him. Far far beyond what he could currently muster. A divine rank indeed.
And yet…
It was, in some sense, a realm of living. Something that sentient beings could aspire to be.
But that…whatever it was…
'L-Logos, what happened just now?'
