Chapter 383: The Divine King Of The Cold Star

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SLAAAASH!

RUMBLE!

"W-What is this?! Aaaaaggghh!" Desire screamed as the frozen slash tore across her body and sent her flying away from Riven.

As she cried out in agony, Desire lost her grip and dropped Riven’s head. His spiritual body rushed beneath it and caught it between both hands. He pressed it back against his neck, and the severed parts reconnected in a burst of light.

"You’re...!" Riven muttered as he regained control of his body. He recognized the man almost immediately. He had seen that face not long ago, although he never expected to find him here, riding through the Noosphere as if death had never claimed him.

Nihil and the other four stared at the newcomer in silence. Desire rose from the distant rubble, clutching the frozen wound across her body, while the others made no attempt to approach him.

"What is the meaning of this?" Nihil demanded. His five eyes narrowed upon the rider. "You still persist despite everything, Divine King of the Cold Star?!"

The handsome, prince-like figure smiled. He reached down, grabbed Riven by the arm, and pulled him onto the stallion before placing him safely behind his back.

"We’re getting out of here," he said as his bright blue eyes shone. The crystalline horse turned at once, ready to flee.

"How is this possible?! Aren’t you dead?!" Riven asked in disbelief, holding on as the stallion began to move. "How are you... here?!"

"Oh, I am," the Divine King replied with a nod. "But so are they. Or rather, she is. They are her shadows, forever bound to this Plane and unable to exist completely outside it." He glanced back at the five entities. "Why do you think they are so desperate to unite it with the Material Plane?"

"Why didn’t you tell me about them?!" Riven demanded furiously. After everything he had inherited from the Divine King, this was not a secret he could easily ignore.

"How could I have known they had already formed?" the Divine King asked. "I only awakened because you inherited my legacy and absorbed the crown carrying my remaining essence. Until then, I was nothing more than a dormant fragment. I knew what they could become, but I had no way of knowing they had already gained bodies and begun acting on their own this fast..."

"What are they?!" Riven asked as they fled. Behind them, the Hand of Inevitability continued its pursuit without slowing down. The surrounding space warped into countless colors, forms, memories, and images, forcing the crystalline stallion to move rapidly between fragments of thoughts that appeared without warning, which formed into monstrous aberrations and nightmares which the Divine King slashed apart with his sword made of Frozen Starlight.

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

As the monstrosities exploded and disappeared into icy dust, the tall prince-like man stared back at the entities chasing them and then at Riven. "They? You could say they are Genesis’s Heart Demons," the Divine King of the Cold Star explained, keeping his eyes fixed on the path ahead.

"...Heart Demons?!" Riven repeated in confusion. He looked back and saw the five entities drawing closer. "What are those?"

"Heart Demons are manifestations of one’s doubts, darkness, and other evil desires. Over time, those impulses gather and compress into curses within the soul," the Divine King explained. "Anyone who lives long enough must continuously cleanse themselves of such corruption. Genesis failed to remove hers completely, and those five eventually gained their own minds and forms and-"

"Halt."

Nihil suddenly appeared before them, blocking their escape. He pointed one mummified hand forward, and pure emptiness spread around the crystalline stallion. An invisible box formed on every side and began shrinking, crushing the warped space within it as its walls closed around Riven and the Divine King.

"We shall not let you take him."

Nihil slowly clenched his outstretched hand. The cube of emptiness tightened with every movement of his fingers, leaving them less room to escape. The crystalline horse struggled to move, but the Divine King of the Cold Star remained calm and narrowed his shining eyes.

"As long as he lives, there is hope."

FLAAASH!

Bright azure light erupted from his sword as he swung it forward. The blade cut through the cube of emptiness and split its invisible walls apart, freeing the stallion from Nihil’s grasp. The same slash continued beyond the barrier and passed completely through Nihil, severing his body in two.

"Gaha?! I-Impossible...!"

Nihil coughed blood as both halves of his body began falling into the endless space below. For the first time, the remaining four members of the Hand of Inevitability were left speechless. Even Desire’s amused expression vanished as she watched their leader fall.

They continued their escape before the other four could recover. The Divine King swung his sword again, cutting through the reality of the Conceptual Domain itself. A glowing tear opened ahead of them, revealing the Material World on the other side. The stallion lowered its head and charged toward the portal.

"How did you even do that...?!" Riven asked, staring at the blade in disbelief. He could feel something familiar within its light.

"I am mostly using your incredible sword," the Divine King of the Cold Star replied. "I repurposed it to carry my legacy, so a fragment of my power remained within it after my death. Here in the Noosphere, where thought and memory can take form, that fragment is enough for me to wield it through you."

"It can do that?!" Riven asked in disbelief. The Divine King of the Cold Star had wielded Riven’s own technique without difficulty and used it to damage the Hand of Inevitability, entities that had seemed untouchable only moments before.

"Oh, this sword can do much more than that," the Divine King of the Cold Star said as he glanced at the glowing blade. "This Sword is you, Riven. It is the embodiment of what you are when everything else is stripped away. In the complete absence of Skills, Spells, Stats, System, you’re your physical body. There is only you, your memories, and the will that shaped them!"

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