Chapter 252: Butcher

Chapter 252: Chapter 252: Butcher

The First Universal Empire did not even have the luxury of time to fully mobilize.

​Yvraine, the Concept Weaver, had meticulously plucked the very idea of anticipation from the cosmic strings. The Zenith Vanguard stood ready at their posts, their weapons drawn and their armor humming with dark matter. However, their minds were entirely blind to the exact second of the strike. Yvraine had erased the concept of a warning.

​Mechanis Zero executed the multiversal breach.

​High above the Cathedral of Providence, the beautiful, swirling sky of fused nebulas abruptly froze. The localized laws of physics pixelated into glowing blue mathematics. The Prime Usurper had calculated the exact resonant frequency of Neo’s absolute barrier and deployed a temporary nullification field. The sky shattered like a fragile mirror.

​Vorgath the World Eater was the first to enter.

​The Tyrant of the Blood Nebula did not step through a portal. He literally punched a hole in the dimensional fabric, tearing a permanent scar across the heavens. Vorgath descended like a blazing meteor of hardened magma and compressed bone. He landed squarely in the center of the Vanguard’s largest planetary garrison.

​The impact did not just crack the ground. It vaporized the entire planet instantly.

​A shockwave of unadulterated physical violence rippled outward, instantly turning millions of elite Zenith Vanguard soldiers into a fine, bloody mist. Their impenetrable cosmic armor offered absolutely no resistance against the sheer kinetic weight of the World Eater.

​Before Neo could fully extend his conceptual grasp to crush the invader, the sky ignited into a blinding, agonizing white light.

​Aurelius Sunbreaker had arrived. The Golden Sovereign did not bother with a vanguard of his own. He raised his golden scepter and unleashed the Judgement of a Thousand Suns. It was a hyper concentrated beam of ordered light forged from the dying screams of primordial stars.

​The beam bypassed the outer defenses entirely, striking directly at the heart of the Cathedral of Providence.

​Neo reacted with absolute instinct. He slammed his hands together, forcing his Dominator Core into hyperdrive. A dome of infinitely dense dark matter erupted around the throne, completely enveloping Noir, Zestia, and little Lyra. The heat from the Celestial beam was so intense that the concept of temperature began to break down. The outer layers of Neo’s dark matter shield hissed and boiled away, forcing him to continuously pump his own life force into the barrier to keep his family alive.

​But Neo was only shielding the throne room. He could not shield the rest of the capital city.

​Outside the barrier, the absolute devastation was unimaginable. The Judgement of a Thousand Suns washed over the grand city of Providence. Grand spires, infinite libraries, and bustling districts filled with millions of loyal subjects were instantly flash fried into white ash.

​Then came the agonizing squelch.

​Xal Teth, the Abyssal Matriarch, poured her weeping shadows through the breach. Her sprawling tentacles cascaded over the surviving sectors of the Aethelgard continent. Wherever her shadows touched, reality rotted. The golden threads of fate that Neo had so carefully woven into his empire began to snap under the weight of her primordial despair. Millions of innocent citizens who had just been celebrating their freedom were dragged screaming into her shifting, toothy maws.

​The coordinated assault lasted exactly sixty seconds.

​It was sixty seconds of multiversal armageddon. Mechanis Zero calculated that maintaining the breach any longer would allow Neo to adapt and counterattack. The artificial god abruptly severed the dimensional anchor, yanking the allied rulers back into the Apex Summit.

​However, they left their massive, translucent avatars projected across the ruined sky to survey their handiwork.

​Neo slowly lowered his dark matter barrier.

​The suffocating smell of ozone, burning plasma, and rotting flesh flooded the throne room. The walls of the boundless cathedral were completely gone. The roof had been sheared off by the celestial beam. Neo stepped forward, his inverted black eyes scanning the horizon.

​His glorious, beautiful empire was scarred beyond recognition.

​The capital city of Providence was a smoking crater of fused glass. The Aethelgard sector, the narrative world he had just saved for Lyra, was half consumed by abyssal rot. The ashes of billions of his loyal subjects fell from the sky like a tragic, gray snowstorm. The sheer scale of the slaughter was paralyzing.

​A heavy, wet thud echoed behind Neo.

​He turned around. General Malakor, the absolute behemoth of the Zenith Vanguard, had been thrown through the remnants of the cathedral doors. The general was a broken, mangled mess. His colossal broadsword was shattered into jagged pieces. Vorgath had literally ripped Malakor’s left arm off at the shoulder. Golden cosmic plasma poured freely from the general’s wounds, pooling onto the obsidian floor.

​"My Sovereign," Malakor choked out, coughing up a wad of glowing blood. "I failed. The giant of magma. He was too fast. I could not hold the line."

​Noir rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside the bleeding general. She pressed her hands against his severed shoulder, channeling her dark magic to cauterize the massive wound. Zestia stood over Lyra, shielding the little girl’s eyes from the horrific sight.

​Neo did not speak. He slowly walked down the steps of the dais. He knelt beside his broken general.

​Neo placed a pale hand on Malakor’s chest. A surge of pure, concentrated assimilation energy flowed from Neo’s palm, stabilizing the general’s collapsing internal organs.

​"Rest, Malakor, You did not fail. You survived a direct strike from a multiversal ruler. That is a victory in itself. Rest now."

​Neo stood up. He turned his gaze toward the sky, looking at the towering, translucent avatars of the five allied rulers.

​Aurelius Sunbreaker looked down at the smoking ruins of the Universal Empire with absolute disdain.

​"This is the price of arrogance, anomaly. You thought you could mock the Celestial Court. You thought your parlor tricks made you a god. We have burned a third of your empire in sixty seconds. Surrender your Dominator Core now, and we will spare the remaining ashes."

​Mechanis Zero projected a string of glowing blue numbers across the sky.

​"Casualty rate calculated at thirty four percent of total planetary mass," the artificial god broadcasted. "Resistance is mathematically futile."

​Xal Teth let out a sickening, bubbling laugh that echoed through the gray snowstorm.

​"Your subjects tasted so sweet, little Emperor," she hissed. "I look forward to devouring the rest."

​Neo stood perfectly still in the center of the ruined cathedral. He did not yell. He did not curse their names. He did not throw a tantrum.

​Instead, a terrifying, absolute silence descended upon Neo.

​The ambient temperature in the room plummeted to absolute zero. The falling gray ashes froze in midair. The Dominator Core inside Neo’s chest stopped pulsing with its usual steady rhythm. It flatlined for a fraction of a second, before reigniting with a color that defied all multiversal logic.

​The core turned from pitch black to a deep, agonizing, luminous crimson.

​It was not the color of dark matter. It was the color of pure, unadulterated multiversal wrath.

​Neo felt a sensation he had not experienced since he first began his conquest of Zenith Prime. He felt profound, agonizing loss. They had come into his home. They had slaughtered his property. They had broken his loyal general. They had traumatized his family.

​A dark, viscous aura began to leak from Neo’s pores. It was so dense, so heavy with pure killing intent, that the physical space around him began to warp and scream. The gravity in the throne room reversed, causing the shattered pieces of the cathedral to float upward into the crimson sky.

​"Husband," Noir whispered, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe and genuine fear. She had never seen this level of raw, unfiltered emotion from him.

​Neo looked up at the avatars of the five rulers. His crimson eyes pierced through the multiversal projections, locking directly onto the true souls of the entities hiding in their distant dimensions.

​"You did not come here to conquer. You came here to wound me. You came here to teach me a lesson about the established order."

​Neo raised his right hand. The crimson aura surrounding his body violently expanded, shooting upward into the sky like a pillar of apocalyptic hellfire. The sheer conceptual pressure of his fury slammed into the translucent avatars, causing them to flicker and violently crack.

​"You have made a catastrophic miscalculation," Neo whispered.

​He slowly clenched his right hand into a tight fist. The avatars of the five multiversal rulers shattered into millions of pieces, forcibly cutting off their connection to his realm.

​Neo lowered his hand. The sky above Providence remained stained with blood and ash. He turned to Noir and Zestia, his expression entirely devoid of mercy, compassion, or restraint. The absolute anchor of his sanity had just been deliberately snapped.

​"Fortify the borders. Heal the wounded. Protect Lyra," Neo commanded, his voice cold enough to freeze the core of a star.

​"Where are you going?" Zestia asked, her voice trembling slightly.

​Neo summoned a blade of pure crimson dark matter into his hand. The weapon hummed with a violent, thirsty vibration. He looked toward the invisible multiversal coordinates of the Celestial Court.

​"I am not going to send an armada," Neo stated, stepping forward to shatter the dimensional fabric with his own two hands. "I am going to their summits. I am going to their pristine courts and their endless void. I am going to butcher them all personally."