Chapter 521 - 519:Finality’s End/Take me.

Chapter 521: Chapter 519:Finality’s End/Take me.

The golden light surrounding my figure and suffusing the entire realm finally died down as my body materialized once more.

I waved, and a mirror materialized right before me.

"Damn... we look good." I couldn’t help but remark after finally getting a good look at what I became after fusing with Elira.

There wasn’t that much of a drastic change—not like after my awakening, no. My eyes had just gained a much deeper hue as the gold became a darker shade, and the cosmic eye swirled with even more fervor. My oblivion markings, on the other hand, had gone from just being etched onto the left side of my body to covering almost every inch of skin, leaving only my face and chest bare as they moved like lifelike entities, each motion undoing the nothingness around me.

"Alright, time to see what I can really do in this form." I smiled. Feeling properly the insane amount of power coursing through my body, I finally leveled my gaze onto the still stationary figure of the apostle below.

"You amuse me, O apostle. Do you not fear the being before you?" I asked, curious at the almost assured confidence radiating off the apostle.

"No!" The apostle shook his head. "I am a bearer of my master’s will, and Master’s will demands that all must come to an inevitable end. A conclusion to be drawn, and you are no different, for your conclusion has already been written, and I am merely here to enact it."

"Hmm... bold words. Allow me to see you back up those words of yours then."

"It has already been done."

The moment the apostle finished speaking,

The entire realm shone a blinding white as stars and worlds were birthed, yet before they could fully take form, colors bled out of their forms, returning the place to its former state. But the damage was already done. Merciless strokes of black and white bathed the infinite darkness. There was no sound, no kinetic pressure, no warning. There was only the inevitable, suffocating mandate of an ending.

Once again, the thought that had occurred to me the first time I laid eyes on the apostle echoed through my mind:

It is done.

The concept bled into the fabric of the realm itself, a cosmic period placed at the end of a sentence that refused to be debated. Every variable in the region—my momentum, my heartbeat, the very concept of my future—was commanded to resolve to zero. An absolute conclusion.

I didn’t dodge. You couldn’t dodge a rule written into the bedrock of existence itself.

Instead, I grinned, the expression feeling heavy against the creeping stasis, but... "Who said the book was closed?"

Denial flared behind my teeth, a violent, jagged rejection of reality’s decree. The fixed timeline fracturing like brittle glass under a hammer. The stasis shattered, snapping back into chaotic motion as my soul rejected the premise of my own obsolescence.

The apostle didn’t blink. Its soulless gaze merely shifted, and the decree intensified, accelerating my timeline straight toward absolute obsolescence—seeking to age my existence into dust in a single, terminal heartbeat.

Devour.

The command echoed through my being as my origin flared.

I didn’t block the concept; no, I opened my mouth and swallowed it whole instead.

The crimson-gold mandate of an ending crashed against my teeth, flooding my system with pure, concentrated chaos-energy. It was heavy—the conclusion of my existence, unlike anything I had expected it to be. My being burned, glowing with a blinding, terrifying light as I digested the absolute conclusion of my own story, turning its finality into fuel for my own furnace.

"Is that all?" I laughed, the sound tearing through the silent nothingness like shrapnel. "You keep trying to write an ending, but you forget who holds the eraser."

"Oblivion."

Black, light-eating shadows unspooled from my body, cascading outward in a jagged wave. Where Finality tried to draw a definitive line across reality, Oblivion un-happened the parchment entirely. The un-silence, the realm, the remnant pieces of Finality’s mandate, and the very concept of the battlefield dissolved into a pristine, blinding white nothingness—a true blank slate where neither endings nor beginnings could ever be written again.

We stood in the middle of literal nothing—not the realm of Shaia’s father, but a consequence of our clash, two opposing contradictions tearing the realm apart and imposing their own edicts:

Finality against Oblivion.

Conclusion against Denial.

The origins within me roared to life as once again, oblivion, denial, and devour surged, their essence combining together as they bled outward in a lightless, all-consuming darkness.

The apostle’s expression finally shifted as it felt the creeping weight of its own existence getting undone. The essence of the combined force bled through as the blank whiteness was slowly undone, the origins uncaring whether or not this was nothingness, for all things could be consumed. All things could be denied, and all will inevitably return to oblivion—and that included nothingness itself.

"Impossible..." The apostle’s words were nothing but a whisper in the fading whiteness as the black slowly covered it, consuming it whole, erasing its being from not just life, but the records of existence, the records of chaos itself.

"This... cannot be..."

"Oh, but it is..." I appeared before the apostle, a smile on my face as I watched in curiosity at the being’s reaction.

No doubt, it was powerful—more so than Fear had been—but he had been a significantly easier foe. Fear had preyed on my ignorance and slipped into my mind, but this apostle was straightforward in his actions, as Finality had no need for the craftiness of Fear. After all, even Fear had an end, but against me...

"Finality is a concept unbecoming of my nature..."

I placed my hand on the head of the apostle as its soulless gaze finally moved, an expression of acknowledgment flashing through them briefly as it knew—it could feel it—its end... was now.

"Remember this, O apostle," I clasped my hand around its head, "In all of existence and beyond, through chaos and infinity, only I... am ABSOLUTE."

I finalized before...

"Devour..."

<<DING!!>>

The system finally acknowledged the feat as the apostle dissolved into my being:

<<You are devouring a being of higher existence... >>

<<Your existence is being refined...>>

<<DING!!>>

<<You have acquired a fragment of the outer-source <Finality>.>>

<<Your existence level has risen...>>

{Existence level}: <Fledgling (45%)>

...

I looked at the display.

"Finality, huh?" Now this, unlike Fear, was something I was actually excited to obtain. After all, being the ABSOLUTE should mean my words and decrees are immutably final.

"But this..." I couldn’t help raising a curious brow at the existence level. Fear had given me a whopping 30%, yet this apostle had given barely half of that despite being more powerful.

"The higher you climb, the harder it becomes. Don’t be surprised if apostles of this level stop being relevant once you become a true juvenile-stage being," Shaia clarified, and I nodded in agreement.

Done taking a look at my gains, I looked around at the blank darkness of nothing once again.

"I can’t feel him. Is he present?"

"He is nothingness itself. If he doesn’t want to be present—or anything, in fact—he won’t be. So trying to feel his presence without him actively seeking you out is pointless."

"I see..." It would seem seeking an audience with my father-in-law this time around wasn’t possible. "Then I guess until next we see."

And for some reason, it felt like that moment wasn’t going to be too far off.

"Let us return. I have something to claim after all." I grinned as the thought of what was waiting for me on the other side finally crossed my mind.

"Pervert."

"Guilty as charged."

With a single thought, my body vanished from the infinite realm of nothingness as I finally returned to my own creation.

.....

"Ehh?"

The first thing that hit me after appearing were the sounds of a major clash ongoing in the distance, as the heated battle between Xuan and the Calderan youth came into view.

"What..." My eyes followed the carnage, catching sight of Leo’s figure in his stationary form, and the blood-crying harbinger kneeling before him.

Salazar was acting like some bizarre choir master, doing what I presumed to be damage control as I could feel his grip on the timeline’s thread, forcing the shockwaves through time.

I had barely had the time to get everything settled in my head before—

Thud!!

A twin-colored rocket launched itself into my embrace.

"Bastard... you absolute scum..." The trembling figure of Sana held me tightly as the tower spirit let out her feelings.

"Looks like it worked, huh?" I smiled, feeling the relieved tension from her body. "What did I tell you? No man but me shall make you tremble, and that too, only for good."

I laughed—or at least tried to—but her next words cut me off.

"Just... shut up and take me..."

My mind short-circuited for a brief instant before it kicked back into action.

Weng!!

My fused form dissolved as Elira was forced out.

"HEY!! I was just getting comfortable!"

I ignored the pouting spirit, my arm wrapping tightly around Sana as I gave Shulvan a glance.

"I’ll be right back."

Not waiting for a reply, I blinked out of the region, as it was time to attend to more... serious matters.

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A/N: Oh... OH!!... no way! Is Sana really about to jump the cue? Oh boy. Clarissa, Dakota and Kaila are not going to like this, not one bit, but hey! You snooze you lose. Heh, I feel bad for Elira, imagine getting expelled just so Dante can go give someone else the treatment you crave, ahh... hope you guys liked the fight? I suck at conceptual battles unfortunately. The next Chapter will be a relaxed one, there’s been too much shenanigans lately, hehehe... time for seggs..

As always,

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Thanks for reading...