Chapter 225: Kill it

“Is the boy here already?”

The deep, resonant voice echoed through the absolute silence of the isolated deep-space dimension.

As the four God Almighties sat in a supreme, hidden council, Morgran turned his heavy, ancient gaze toward Bark.

The King of the Sky was a terrifying, elemental presence. His physical form constantly shifted along the edges, subtly churning with raw wind, compressed earth, and chaotic fire that had existed since the dawn of time.

Bark, the newly ascended World Tree God, floated calmly beside him.

His divine, wooden growth seemed to actively absorb and dazzle beneath the cold, distant starlight. His towering presence blended perfectly and naturally with the vast, endless void of space surrounding their hidden domain.

“Yes, he came in over an hour ago.”

Bark’s voice was smooth, carrying the familiar, grounded cadence of Adam.

Inside the World Tree’s Domain, absolutely no other God could peer in.

It didn’t matter if they were minor deities or supreme God Almighties like Morgran, Karth, and Titan. This was Bark’s sovereign, conceptual territory, and within its borders, his laws reigned supreme.

Whatever took place inside the emerald canopy of the World Tree remained completely, utterly beyond their ability to observe directly.

Consequently, there was absolutely no way for the other three Almighties to track Ethen’s specific movements without asking Bark himself.

“Alright, let’s gather the relevant figures here,” Karth said.

The God of Humanity looked slowly at the other three supreme beings present in the void. His usual, relaxed smile was completely gone, replaced by a cold, unfathomable seriousness.

There were far, far bigger problems pressing down on them now than there had been in the past.

Their lavish gathering, the expensive wine, and the polite congratulations had merely been a necessary, diplomatic preliminary. It was a required formality to settle the factions before they addressed the true, terrifying decisions they needed to make.

The global situation had changed completely and fundamentally since the beast-kin war began.

With Bark’s violent ascension to the Almighty realm, the cosmic balance of power had permanently shifted. The four God Almighties could no longer afford to passively ignore the massive, existential threats looming silently over their heads.

It was time to bring their sharpest weapons up to speed.

Inside the lush, emerald plaza of the World Tree, the atmosphere was perfectly relaxed.

Several ancient figures were still laughing deeply, holding crystal goblets, and casually discussing territorial politics among themselves.

Ethen was just turning to respond to one of Griffin’s loud, boisterous jokes about hunting dragons.

Then, the universe simply vanished.

They didn’t feel a massive spike in ambient mana. There was no glowing magical circle, no warning alarms, and no spatial tearing.

They simply felt their bodies being instantly enveloped by an absolute, invisible, insurmountable force.

Before a single Angel could draw a weapon or flare their divine auras, their comfortable surroundings abruptly ceased to exist.

The warm sunlight, the interwoven vines, and the cozy gathering disappeared entirely.

They were instantly replaced by the freezing, suffocating void of an entirely different, isolated location.

Ethen was the very first to respond.

His violent, newly evolved combat instincts kicked in before his conscious mind could even process the visual shift.

Sensing an absolute, immediate threat to his life, his Cosmic Tyrant aura flared with explosive, terrifying violence.

He instantly activated World Traverse, fully intending to violently rip a hole in space and escape the unfamiliar dimension.

His body blurred, turning into a streak of pure, conceptual energy. In a fraction of a microsecond, he commanded the spatial laws to move him thousands of kilometers away.

The void warped heavily around his physical body. The terrifying speed should have instantly placed him on an entirely different continent.

Yet, when Ethen slammed his boots down and stopped his momentum, his freezing blood ran completely cold.

He was still standing in the exact same spot.

He was perfectly stationary, standing directly in front of an enormous, glowing cosmic map floating in the dark void.

His cold, arrogant expression completely shattered.

He gripped the hilt of his heavy saber, grinding his teeth as he forcefully channeled a massive, blinding surge of his S-Rank Angel mana into his legs.

He tried again.

He forcibly tore at the spatial fabric, demanding it to bend to his tyrannical will.

Space rippled aggressively, bending backward like a highly tensioned rubber band. But the moment he tried to step through the tear, the absolute laws of this isolated dimension violently snapped back into place.

It aggressively crushed his spatial tunnel, forcing him to remain exactly where he was.

The ability that had allowed him to effortlessly traverse vast, impossible distances across the Nether Realm had suddenly become utterly, completely useless.

No matter how far he violently attempted to throw himself, his physical position relative to the glowing map remained completely unchanged.

For the very first time since violently ascending to the Angel realm, Ethen felt a genuine, freezing sense of absolute alarm.

Have I been kidnapped?

It was the first, most logical possibility that his paranoid, calculating mind immediately jumped to.

He had spent more than enough time dealing with ancient, powerful beings to intimately understand the food chain.

Successfully becoming an Angel didn’t mean he was suddenly untouchable.

If someone possessed the sheer, conceptual authority to forcibly drag an S-Rank Cosmic Tyrant into an unfamiliar space and completely nullify his absolute escape abilities, the difference in their power was mathematically terrifying.

It was an enormous, insurmountable gap.

His dark, aggressive gaze swept rapidly across the cold, starlit surroundings, his hand refusing to leave his weapon as he searched for an immediate explanation.

Then, his sharp eyes noticed the other figures floating in the void.

Ulric.

Bartholomew.

Blazing Star.

Falcon.

Ni’an.

Mr. Mysteries.

Griffin, whose goblet of wine had vanished from his hand.

And several dozen other elite Angels whose scarred faces Ethen had just recognized from the lively gathering moments ago.

Ethen’s tight, aggressive expression eased very slightly, although the violent tension in his coiled muscles remained.

If all of these supreme, ancient powerhouses had also been forcibly dragged here without their consent, then this likely wasn’t a targeted, specific assassination attempt directed solely at him.

Still, he absolutely wasn’t about to blindly lower his guard simply because he recognized a few familiar, friendly faces in the dark.

Then, Ethen looked straight up.

Towering above them in the endless, dark expanse of space floated four massive, conceptual figures.

The four God Almighties.

Ethen’s dark eyes narrowed into cold, calculating slits as he took in the overwhelming, suffocating scene.

Whatever had just aggressively broken the laws of space to bring them here, he now had a perfectly clear idea of exactly who was responsible.

“There is no need for all of that violent tension, kid. You’re completely safe.”

Karth smiled warmly, waving a casual hand down toward Ethen, who still looked entirely ready to draw his saber and start a hopeless war.

The young man had been through an absurd, traumatic amount of betrayal and bloodshed, and his intense paranoia was incredibly well deserved.

After everything Ethen had violently experienced, blindly trusting a God simply because they politely claimed to have good intentions would have been a suicidal, foolish mistake.

Besides, Ethen sharply understood that the fundamental difference between an ordinary Tier 1 God and a fully realized God Almighty was an endless abyss.

If one of these four supreme entities truly wanted to erase him from existence, there was absolutely nothing Ethen could accomplish through brute force or clever tactics alone.

“We have invited you all here to discuss a matter of extreme, global urgency,” Karth continued smoothly, his voice echoing loudly as he looked down at the assembled, nervous Angels.

Ethen listened quietly, slowly releasing his white-knuckled grip on his weapon.

He was still entirely new to the complex, high-level political arrangements that governed Angels and Gods.

He didn’t fully understand their hidden responsibilities, how their covert affairs were managed, or exactly what kind of absolute authority the four God Almighties exercised over the roaming Angels.

He only logically knew that Angels were the absolute peak fighting force within the Spirit World.

The terrifying fact that so many of them had been forcibly summoned at the exact same time strongly suggested that the matter under discussion was apocalyptic in nature.

But before they proceeded any further into the briefing, Karth turned his glowing gaze toward Bark.

“First, let’s properly congratulate our brother Bark.”

Karth smiled, his aura warming the freezing void.

The other Angels quickly followed his political lead, and the heavy, suffocating atmosphere in the deep-space dimension briefly became significantly warmer.

Some of the ancient figures gathered in the void had been alive long, long before Bark had ever ascended to his current Godhood.

Among the Angels present were legendary individuals who had personally witnessed the bloody rise and fall of countless hidden powers. Some had known the World Tree long enough to comfortably call him a brother without a single second of hesitation.

Others, like Ethen and Falcon, had entirely different, more complicated relationships with him. Their dynamics were strictly shaped by their respective factions and the violent circumstances of their past encounters.

Regardless of their personal feelings, Adam’s unprecedented ascension to a God Almighty was a cosmic achievement entirely worthy of their absolute respect.

“Congratulations, brother Bark!”

“Congratulations, Senior!”

“Congratulations, Your Grace!”

One after another, the elite Angels bowed deeply toward the familiar-looking, gray-haired young man floating calmly beside the massive cosmic map.

Bark looked down at his assembled guests with a soft, grounded smile.

“Thank you all. I couldn’t have successfully done it without the direct help of some of you here.”

His glowing, starlit gaze briefly settled heavily on Martin Martel, who stood quietly to one side among the assembled, powerful figures.

Martin returned the pointed look with a deep, highly respectful bow.

Bark’s violent, sudden rise to power had absolutely not occurred in complete isolation.

Numerous individuals, hidden factions, and strategic alliances had heavily contributed to the exact circumstances that allowed him to reach his current, supreme position, and he wasn’t about to arrogantly pretend otherwise.

After politely acknowledging the wave of congratulations, however, Bark’s warm expression rapidly settled into something completely serious.

The brief moment of celebration was officially over.

“Anyway…”

Karth’s warm, relaxed smile faded entirely into something far, far more complicated and dangerous.

The God of Humanity casually waved his unarmored hand toward the massive map floating directly in front of him, and the detailed image of the Spirit World flared brilliantly across its surface.

The magical view rapidly expanded, revealing a flawless, three-dimensional representation of the planet resting below them.

Vast, sprawling territories spread across the glowing map, with sharply different colored regions clearly marking the lands that had already violently fallen under their unified control.

The image offered a crystal-clear, strategic view of the world they had spent so many bloody generations fighting to conquer.

For a long, heavy moment, Karth simply stared at the rotating globe in absolute silence.

Then, he finally spoke.

“We are thinking of killing the World’s Will. Is anyone interested?”

Karth asked the impossible, world-shattering question with a strange, chilling smile that wasn’t quite a smile at all.

Absolute, suffocating silence immediately followed the statement.

The atmosphere in the deep-space dimension instantly plummeted below freezing, becoming entirely tense and terrifyingly heavy.

Even the ancient, battle-hardened Angels who had been completely relaxed mere moments earlier found themselves physically freezing in place.

Several supreme beings exchanged wide-eyed, terrified glances, while others simply stared blankly at Karth exactly as though they weren’t entirely certain they had heard him correctly.

After all, what the God of Humanity had just casually proposed sounded completely, undeniably ludicrous.

Killing the World’s Will?

It wasn’t a beast. It wasn’t a rival faction.

It was the very absolute, foundational existence that strictly governed the conceptual laws of the universe they inhabited. It was the operating system of reality itself.

It was one thing to violently wage war against other mortal races, aggressively conquer vast territories, or proudly challenge powerful Tier 2 Gods.

Those were bloody, understandable conflicts that beings of their terrifying level could logically process and execute.

But murdering the World’s Will was an entirely different, apocalyptic matter.

And now, a supreme God Almighty was casually asking a room full of Angels if they were interested in helping him execute the universe.