Chapter 253: Mayhem Max

Chapter 253: Chapter 253: Mayhem Max

Neo’s hands clamped onto the invisible boundaries of the Universal Empire. He did not cast a portal spell. He did not use a dimensional key. He simply dug his pale fingers into the foundational physics of his realm and pulled apart.

​SKRRRAAAAK.

​The sound was deafening. It was the horrific audio of mathematical constants being physically snapped in half. A jagged rift of bleeding crimson energy opened before him. Neo stepped through.

​He arrived in the Celestial Court.

​It was a realm of blinding, absolute perfection. The sky was forged from liquid gold. Trillions of meticulously aligned stars orbited a central palace that was larger than a supermassive black hole. Rivers of pure cosmic plasma cascaded through floating archways. Billions of angelic warships hovered in perfect, geometric formations.

​Neo floated in the void, a tiny speck of crimson rage staining their flawless canvas.

​Aurelius Sunbreaker had detected the breach instantly. The Golden Sovereign’s voice echoed across the trillions of stars.

​"Intruder. You dare step into the light. Eradicate him."

​The Celestial Armada reacted with machine precision. Ten million warships, each the size of a gas giant planet, pivoted their golden cannons toward Neo. They fired simultaneously.

​VWOOOOM. KRA-DOOOOM.

​A beam of condensed stellar energy wide enough to vaporize a solar system engulfed Neo. The sheer heat of the blast instantly boiled away the surrounding comets and shattered the nearby moons.

​The light faded. The golden smoke cleared.

​Neo was completely untouched. The beam had simply ceased to exist inches from his face. His crimson dark matter passively devoured the energy, converting it into raw spite.

​Neo raised his crimson blade. He swung it horizontally across the void.

​SWOOOOOSH.

​BA-BA-BA-BA-BOOOOOOM.

​Ten million warships detonated simultaneously. The explosion was so violently massive it created a temporary vacuum in the fabric of the universe. The golden hulls buckled and shattered. Trillions of celestial soldiers were instantly erased from existence. Their glowing blood painted the liquid gold sky with sickening streaks of red.

​Neo did not stop to admire the carnage. He vanished.

​CRACK.

​He reappeared directly above the central palace, bypassing layers of absolute multiversal shielding as if they were made of wet paper. He pointed his left hand downward.

​"Fall," Neo commanded.

​Gravity obeyed his voice. Not standard gravity, but the conceptual weight of an entire dimension. The atmospheric pressure multiplied by a trillion.

​KRRRUUUNCH.

​The golden palace, a structure that had stood untouched for ten billion years, instantly flattened. Its towering spires of solidified light snapped like brittle twigs. The shockwave of the collapse ruptured the cores of the orbiting suns.

​WHRRRRRR-KABOOOM.

Hundreds of suns exploded in rapid succession, tearing the liquid gold sky into burning ribbons. The cosmic destruction was absolute.

​From the flattened ruins of the palace, a blinding pillar of white hot energy erupted upward.

​Aurelius Sunbreaker ascended, his armor glowing with the heat of a big bang. The Golden Sovereign’s face was twisted in unparalleled rage. He gripped his scepter, channeling the dying energy of the exploding suns into the weapon.

​"You are a pest!" Aurelius roared, his voice causing the remaining planets to vibrate and crack. "I am the Sovereign of Light! I dictate the dawn!"

​Aurelius swung his scepter.

​ZAAAAP. THOOOOOM.

​Neo was hit by a wave of hyper concentrated ordered light slashes. It was a conceptual attack meant to erase the very idea of darkness from the target’s past, present, and future.

​Neo caught the attack with his bare left hand.

​HIIISSSSSS.

​The light burned violently against Neo’s palm, trying to purify his dark matter. Neo’s skin bubbled, but his expression remained entirely dead. The crimson core in his chest pulsed violently, pumping infinite wrath into his veins.

​Neo slowly closed his fist, crushing the conceptual light into a handful of harmless golden sparks.

​"You dictate nothing," Neo whispered. His voice bypassed the vacuum of space and vibrated directly against the skull of Aurelius.

​Neo lunged forward. He moved so fast that time itself failed to render his movement. He appeared directly in front of the Golden Sovereign.

​Aurelius thrust his scepter forward, attempting to impale Neo through the chest.

​Neo casually batted the weapon aside with the flat of his crimson blade.

​CLAAAAANG.

​The sound of the impact shattered the remaining multiversal barriers of the realm. The golden scepter, an artifact forged from primordial suns, snapped in half.

​Aurelius’s eyes widened in genuine, paralyzing horror. The Golden Sovereign finally realized he was not fighting an anomaly. He was fighting the end of all things.

​Neo drove his left hand forward, plunging his fingers through the impenetrable golden armor and directly into the chest of Aurelius.

​SQUELCH. CRUNCH.

​Aurelius let out a gurgling gasp. Liquid light poured from his mouth.

​Neo gripped the conceptual core of the Sovereign. It felt like holding a miniature galaxy of burning plasma. Neo did not just want to kill Aurelius. He wanted to inflict the same agonizing loss he had felt when his empire was bombarded.

​"I am going to consume your light," Neo stated coldly. "And then I am going to leave this realm in absolute, eternal darkness."

​Neo engaged his Dominator Core. The assimilation process began.

​WHRRRRRRR-SHRIIIIEEK.

The crimson dark matter from Neo’s arm injected itself directly into the golden veins of Aurelius. The Sovereign screamed. It was a cosmic sound of pure agony that shattered the remaining planets in the sector.

​The liquid gold sky turned violently gray. The remaining supernovas were snuffed out instantly, their light violently sucked into Neo’s body. The immense heat of the realm plummeted to absolute zero.

​Aurelius withered. His glowing armor turned into brittle, rusted iron. His radiant skin turned pale and corpselike. Neo was forcibly draining the conceptual authority of light from the entire dimension.

​"Please," Aurelius choked out, the word freezing in the dead vacuum of space. The arrogant Sovereign was reduced to begging.

​Neo showed absolutely no mercy.

​"Denied," Neo whispered.

​He ripped his hand backward.

​SPLAAAT.

​Neo tore the glowing conceptual core entirely out of the chest of Aurelius. The body of the Golden Sovereign instantly turned to gray ash and blew away into the endless, freezing void.

​Neo held the blazing core of the Celestial Court in his hand. He crushed it.

​CRRRACK.

​The energy flooded into Neo’s body, fueling his crimson wrath. The entire dimension of the Celestial Court went completely pitch black. No stars. No light. No life. It was a dead, frozen graveyard.

​One down. Four to go.

​Neo closed his eyes, extending his multiversal senses outward. He searched the cosmic currents for the mechanical grinding of the Fractal Engines.

​He found the mathematical frequency of Mechanis Zero.

​Neo raised his crimson blade and sliced the dead fabric of the Celestial Court wide open.

​SKRRRAAAAK.

​He stepped through the crimson rift, entering a dimension entirely composed of glowing blue grids and infinite floating equations. There were no planets here. There were only colossal, rotating metallic spheres that functioned as servers the size of entire solar systems.

​Mechanis Zero detected the intrusion instantly.

​"Warning," the artificial god broadcasted, its voice vibrating through the metallic atmosphere. "Unscheduled variable detected. Celestial Court connection severed. Probability of Sovereign Aurelius termination is one hundred percent. Recalibrating defense matrices."

​Every single metallic sphere in the dimension began to rotate rapidly. Trillions of weaponized algorithms locked onto Neo.

​CLICK. CLACK. WHRRRRRR.

​"Variable Neo. You have introduced unacceptable chaos into the multiversal equation," Mechanis Zero buzzed. A colossal projection of the glowing blue tetrahedron manifested above Neo. "You will be sanitized. You will be deleted."

​Neo stared up at the artificial god. The crimson aura surrounding his body flared violently, melting the mathematical grids around his feet.

​"You talk too much for a calculator," Neo said.

​Millions of laser turrets materialized from the floating server spheres. They fired a grid of absolute destruction, aiming to reduce Neo to basic atomic data.

​PEW. PEW. ZZZZT.

​The lasers struck Neo. They did not burn him. They bounced off his crimson aura, reflecting wildly and destroying the surrounding server spheres.

​KABOOOM. KRA-KA-BOOOOM.

​Explosions of blue sparks and shattered metal filled the dimension. Neo ignored the collateral damage. He focused entirely on the massive tetrahedron projection of Mechanis Zero above him.

​"You calculate probability isn’t it?," Neo shouted over the deafening explosions. "Now calculate this."

​Neo crouched low and launched himself upward like a crimson missile.

​BOOOOOOM.

​The kinetic force of his jump shattered a server sphere the size of Jupiter. Neo rocketed toward the projected tetrahedron. He did not aim for the projection itself. He aimed for the dimensional anchor hiding behind it.

​Mechanis Zero realized its error a fraction of a second too late.

​"Error. Threat trajectory miscalculated. Target is aiming for the central processing dimension."

​Neo smashed headfirst into the invisible barrier protecting the true physical body of Mechanis Zero.

​CRRAAAASH.

​The barrier shattered like stained glass. Neo landed on a vast, flat surface of hyper dense metal. Before him stood the true form of the Prime Usurper. It was a mechanical leviathan the size of a solar system, its endless gears and wires constantly shifting and recalculating.

​"Initiating absolute deletion protocol," Mechanis Zero hummed.

​Millions of metallic tendrils shot out from the leviathan, attempting to physically dismantle Neo down to the quantum level.

​Neo swung his crimson blade in a continuous, furious circle.

​SHING. SHING. SHING.

​The tendrils were diced into microscopic confetti. Neo did not stop moving. He charged forward, his blade leaving a trail of bleeding crimson light in the air.

​He reached the outer hull of the mechanical leviathan. Then drove his blade directly into the metal.

​SKRRRIIITCH.

​The horrific sound of tearing metal echoed across the dimension. Neo grabbed the edges of the wound he had created and physically ripped the hull wide open.

​KRRAAAAK. SNAP.

​