Damien had two faces.
He was a man who liked using disguises and concealment. These abilities allowed him to act as he wanted to without facing consequences.
But he didn't use disguises because he was trying to be secretive.
Not in the slightest.
Damien was a man who liked concealment and used it frequently.
However, he was also a man who always fought his enemies face-to-face.
The enemies he'd met in the Heavenly World had generally only seen one of those faces. Even when he caused a stir, it was always in such a way that Void Palace wouldn't be brought into the mess.
His face was too recognizable, after all.
This time, he didn't try to hide.
He went out with the appearance he'd held since birth.
And he used his abilities without restriction.
Flash!
There was only one flash. It happened when Damien left Void Palace.
By the time he reappeared?
Not even a few seconds had passed, yet he was already in the Southwestern Region.
'Their last known position is…'
It was somewhere above the ocean.
They hadn't tried to return to land yet, probably because they were aware of what awaited them there, but they also hadn't stopped since they started across the ocean.
Their destination was unknown. There was a possibility that they were trying to find some discreet location on the ocean itself to hide away and gain strength.
On the other hand, it was also entirely possible that they had a goal in mind and were moving with the sole purpose of reaching it.
Damien didn't really care.
He could find out from their corpses.
What mattered was the fact that they were somewhere with no witnesses, a place where Damien could truly exert his dominion.
It was difficult to travel across the Heavenly World. Because of its scale and the strangeness of its land borders, it was hard to tell which areas were safe and which ones were dangerous.
Even if they were all dangerous, the amount of time one would have to spend, no matter what means of transportation they used, was great.
Damien was able to teleport people unreasonable distances within unreasonable timespans since long ago.
He'd managed to send messengers to the Northwestern Region in a mere month, hadn't he?
It had to be remembered that even starships needed years to travel across a single cardinal region.
The Absolute Perception ability Damien possessed allowed him to expand his teleportation range infinitely after he adapted to the Heavenly World's dense spatial layers.
Now, not only could he move from Void Palace to the oceanic region behind the Divine Order headquarters in seconds, he could even move from this place to the Straea Clan in the same amount of time.
Travel was no longer a problem for him.
The same, however, couldn't be said about his enemies.
Gods had a great deal of advantages in this world. Their speed and movement capabilities were some of them.
In most cases, Gods could travel faster on foot than by any other means of transportation.
The five Gods had managed to cross an impressive stretch of water in the time it took for the allied armies to find traces of explosives underground.
Unfortunately for them, there was nowhere in this world they could go to avoid Damien.
He was already above them.
He'd been watching them for a bit, but he waited before attacking to see whether the threats they made were legitimate or not.
Since he was now aware…
'Don't go anywhere.'
He didn't say it out loud, but the five Gods responded as if they'd heard him.
They stopped in place.
They couldn't move.
'Isolate this space.'
Domination.
Through this concept, the space in the surrounding hundred kilometers was isolated from reality and turned into its own dimension, entirely under Damien's control.
"Do you guys know what you've done?"
Damien walked through the sky and approached them.
The five Gods didn't have the power to respond.
They didn't even have the power to tremble as they feared for their lives.
Just…what kind of being had approached them?
The second his presence appeared in their perception, they lost all movement capability.
Not only that, but they also felt their Divine Energy lock up. It refused to flow as it usually did, and if they tried to control it, it backfired and injured them instead.
Those words Damien spoke were the most terrifying words they'd ever heard.
Especially when they finally saw the face of the one who spoke.
"Do you recognize me?"
The five Gods couldn't answer, but the emotions in their eyes still changed according to their thoughts.
Incredulity, confusion, and fear. Everything else was drowned out by these three emotions.
Damien Void.
If they didn't know his face by now, they'd be idiots.
He was a boy who'd only recently ascended to the Heavenly World, yet somehow he'd become Void Palace's Young Lord, the man destined to lead it in the future.
They'd tried to assassinate him many times already, but none of those attempts succeeded.
Rather, none of them were able to get close to him at all.
The assassins sent by them and all others who tried to kill Damien when he first ascended to the throne died mysteriously the moment they stepped into the main palace's vicinity.
It was like sorcery, even to these ancient beings who'd seen Godhood itself with their own eyes.
Those attempts stopped without gaining much traction. For the most part, people assumed that the 12 Swords were watching the borders like eagles.
The majority formed the opinion that Void Palace valued Damien a lot more than expected and left it at that.
After all, even when he left the palace to investigate the Dimensional Crack, the assassins sent after him were destroyed without a word.
There couldn't be any other explanation.
Except, there was.
It was right in front of them now.
It wasn't that Damien was being protected by an extremely powerful force.
The truth was far more terrifying.
"Are you all done pondering yet?"
His voice snapped then out of their thoughts.
Damien Void…
He was a monster beyond measure.
He himself was the one who'd been holding them back and ruining their plans from the beginning.
It was he who truly controlled everything from the shadows.
This was the first time they met him in person, and it was quite a first meeting.
Because despite the power they thought they had, despite all the cards they thought they'd prepared…
"It's not working, is it?"
They knew what he was talking about.
Since the moment he caught them, all five of them had been trying to detonate the explosives hidden throughout the Southwestern Region.
They didn't need mana or even physical motion to activate them. Exactly in preparation for a situation similar to this one, they'd devised a method that allowed them to trigger the explosions with their thoughts alone.
However…
"Your connection with the outside world is completely severed. You can think of it like you're in the home cosmos of those rats you guys worship. You wouldn't be able to control mana that exists in another cosmos, would you?"
Damien was kind enough to explain all the details to them.
It wasn't a bad thing to satisfy their curiosity.
They'd been dead since the moment Damien caught them.
Their heads were already severed from their bodies.
Their bodies had already been devoured.
Their souls no longer existed in this world.
Only their egos were eternally trapped in this illusion, seeing Damien speak to them and feeling the terror that seemed to originate from their souls.
In reality, they were already gone.
They were already drenched in Nonexistence.
Damien came to dominate.
And that was exactly what he did.
Whether in mind, body, or soul, they wouldn't forget his terrifying dominance.
That was something even Nonexistence couldn't erase.
