Chapter 226: Untitled

"Of course, not in the literal sense. The World’s Will can’t experience true death, after all."

Karth laughed, breaking the stunned silence that had settled over the gathering.

The sound didn’t just echo; it vibrated through the very fabric of the isolated deep-space dimension. It was a terrifying distortion of reality, a casual reminder of the God Almighty’s absolute authority over the laws of physics.

Space itself seemed to warp and bend around the amusement of a being who had transcended mortal limits.

Several Angels exchanged anxious glances, their immense auras fluctuating under the sudden metaphysical pressure.

Others relaxed slightly, their tense shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch. Even so, the explanation did little to genuinely ease their concerns.

Whatever Karth meant by killing the World’s Will, it was never going to be a simple undertaking.

Ethen remained perfectly still, his expression carved from absolute ice.

He didn’t share their fleeting relief or their underlying fear. He only calculated.

If a thing existed, it could be unmade. It didn’t matter if it was a mechanical process, a conceptual law, or a cosmic deity.

If it threatened his wife and his unborn child, it was simply another obstacle to be shattered. His heir would not inherit a world held hostage by a defective operating system.

"Let me explain."

Karth waved his hand, and the heavy, oppressive atmosphere of the dimension warped.

The cosmic map hovering before them transformed, bleeding from abstract starlight into a detailed, moving display.

The three-dimensional image of their planet expanded rapidly, revealing sweeping continents, raging oceans, and the familiar borders of their war-torn territories.

Then, the scene shifted to something far more abstract and conceptually profound.

The physical planet dissolved into a network of glowing, pulsing veins of cosmic energy. It was a visual representation of the universe’s source code, a tangled web of absolute laws and natural edicts.

"The World’s Will existed before time itself," Karth began, his tone taking on the cadence of a scholar reciting a grim history.

"It is the existence that created this world and governs it. However, that is about all it is."

The glowing veins on the map pulsed like a colossal, disembodied heart, beating in time with the very rhythm of reality.

"At its core, it is a mechanical process that keeps the world running," Karth continued. "Without it, the world would die. It controls fate, life, death, and the various concepts that govern existence."

He paused briefly, allowing the crushing weight of the information to settle over the assembled Angels.

Ethen narrowed his eyes, his S-Rank perception analyzing the shifting strands of fate on the cosmic display.

A mechanical process. A blind, unfeeling program running the universe.

It was pathetic, really. An entity with absolute power but no true vision or soul. Ethen could feel the presence of Adam within his soul space—a true God Almighty of his own making, a being of the World Tree.

Compared to the limitless potential of his absolute summons, this World’s Will sounded like a stagnant, glorified caretaker.

"However, its most primitive feature is its love for the planet and its unwillingness to see it perish."

Karth’s expression darkened, the shadows in the deep-space dimension seeming to bend toward his gravitational pull.

"This primitive desire has kept it at odds with living beings since time immemorial, making it our enemy."

It was the ultimate contradiction, a paradox that had shaped the blood-soaked history of their world.

The World’s Will was the very process that had brought humanity into existence, yet it was also the entity that hated humanity the most.

It had created life, only to repeatedly orchestrate catastrophes against the very beings that inhabited its surface.

Its singular, obsessive desire to preserve the physical planet often violently conflicted with the survival of those living within it. To the World’s Will, life was a parasite. A disease slowly eating away at its beloved host.

Ethen felt a cold sneer tug at the corner of his mouth.

A creator that devoured its own children to keep its house clean. It was a fundamentally flawed logic.

Ethen’s thoughts drifted to his wife, to the fragile, precious life growing within her. He would gladly burn this entire planet to ash, crack the heavens, and drain the oceans if it meant keeping his family safe.

The World’s Will prioritized the dirt beneath their feet over the blood in their veins.

That made them fundamentally incompatible. That made the World’s Will a variable that Ethen had to permanently violently erase.

And humanity wasn’t the only race affected by this cosmic hypocrisy.

"This naturally extends to the Demi-humans as well," Karth said, his voice cutting through Ethen’s icy reverie. "So you can understand my confusion over the way the Dragon God Clan has been operating in recent years."

The map turned blank once again, the light vanishing into the void of the dimension.

The glowing veins of fate dissolved, instantly replaced by an entirely different, far more ominous image.

A colossal, serpentine dragon was coiled around a brilliant, pulsating orb.

Its enormous, scaled body was wrapped around the sphere of conceptual light in a tight, almost intimate embrace. The sheer scale of the projection radiated a suffocating pressure.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. The blasphemy of the image paralyzed the room.

Then, Bark smirked, the sound sharp and jarring.

"Embracing, I see."

The implication was clear enough, cutting through the silence like a serrated blade.

The Dragon God Clan appeared to have aligned itself with the World’s Will in an effort to eliminate humanity.

The very being responsible for unleashing apocalyptic catastrophes against both sides had somehow taken the Dragon God Clan’s side. The reasons remained unclear, but the visual evidence was undeniable.

It was an alliance that defied every established law of nature and history.

The World’s Will had spent countless ages opposing living beings, regardless of their race, faction, or origin. Yet now, the arrogant beasts of the Dragon God Clan were actively cooperating with it.

Whatever the Dragons had promised the Will, the consequences threatened to erase everyone in this dimension.

"I only discovered a few years ago that the one called Long was working with the World’s Will," Bark added, his expression remaining maddeningly calm.

"If I’m correct, that’s the reason he didn’t appear when we attacked Celestial City."

The surrounding Angels grew even more serious, their auras spiking with a mixture of realization and dread.

Long The First Celestial Dragon.

His absence during the brutal, world-shaking attack on Celestial City had been a glaring anomaly. Given the immense strategic importance of the city and the Dragon God Clan’s iron-fisted influence over the surrounding territories, his failure to show up had baffled the human forces.

At the time, there had been various tactical explanations for his decision to stay away.

Now, however, the truth clicked into place with horrifying clarity.

He had been occupied with something far more important than a single city or a territorial dispute. He was busy hijacking the operating system of reality itself.

This wasn’t simply a conflict over territory, resources, or political influence anymore. It was a potentially world-ending situation.

Ethen crossed his arms, his mind spinning a thousand tactical webs per second.

The Celestial Dragons had never been known for their humility. They were arrogant, prideful, and utterly convinced that the world belonged to them and them alone.

The Divine Beast Mountain and its inhabitants meant little to them beyond what they could provide as mere cannon fodder.

If sacrificing the entire world—or wiping out every other race—was necessary to achieve their grand ambitions, there was little reason to believe they would hesitate for a fraction of a second.

Their actions had finally laid their true intentions bare.

"What do we do now?"

Ulric’s voice broke the heavy silence, thick with pragmatic concern.

A serious, deep-set frown had settled on the First Warrior of the Dawn Faction’s face. Ulric had participated in enough apocalyptic battles to understand the fatal consequences of underestimating an enemy.

But this situation was entirely different from anything they had faced before.

They weren’t just fighting monsters or rival factions; they were fighting the architect of their universe.

If Celestial dragon whos name was Long succeeded in his fusion, whatever abomination followed could annihilate them all with a single thought.

It didn’t matter how many Angels they gathered, or how many S-Rank powerhouses they deployed. It didn’t matter how many territories they conquered or how many tactical victories they claimed.

None of those achievements would mean anything if the World’s Will and the Dragon God Clan succeeded in creating a new reality where humanity simply ceased to exist.

"It’ll take a few more years for the two to actually fuse, so we’ve discovered the problem early enough," Karth replied, his voice a soothing balm over the rising panic.

Ethen immediately locked onto the timeline, his cosmic aura flaring dangerously for a microsecond.

A few more years.

His child would be born long before then. That gave him a strict, non-negotiable deadline.

He would not allow his child to take their first steps in a world held hostage by an arrogant lizard and a malfunctioning cosmic machine. The threat needed to be sterilized, entirely and permanently, before it ever reached his family’s doorstep.

"Right now, we need to prepare a way to stop it," Karth continued.

As he spoke, his glowing gaze shifted towards the giant man standing among the four God Almighties.

Titan.

The enormous man was a towering mountain of muscle and ancient, foundational power. He had remained relatively quiet throughout the discussion, his massive arms folded as he listened to his peers explain the grim situation.

Now, with Karth explicitly directing everyone’s attention towards him, he finally spoke.

"When I was born, I crawled out of the Petri dish into the world."

Titan’s voice was a deep, rumbling earthquake. It didn’t just reach their ears; it vibrated in the marrow of their bones.

"However, I have memories of a time before that."

His words immediately attracted the rapt attention of every assembled Angel.

Even among the God Almighties, Titan was an extreme anomaly. His origins were shrouded in layers of biological and cosmic mystery, and the few details known about his past only ever raised further, more terrifying questions.

"I believe the World’s Will is uniquely flawed in how it created this world," Titan said, stepping forward.

The cosmic display shifted again as Titan took control of the visual representation.

"When it created the concept of death, it failed to create a place where the souls of the dead would ultimately go."

He paused, letting the sheer weight of that cosmic error sink in.

"That failure resulted in the creation of the Spirit World."

Ethen’s eyes widened slightly, a genuine spark of tactical interest cutting through his cold detachment.

A flaw. A blind spot in the absolute design.

"The Spirit World became a place where the World’s Will had no control, despite being the very thing it desired most to govern," Titan rumbled.

The physical world mapped before them split, revealing a dark, inverse reflection of itself.

The Spirit World was fundamentally different from the physical world. It wasn’t a deliberate, carefully crafted creation.

It existed purely as a consequence of the World’s Will creating a concept—death—without properly coding the necessary infrastructure for what came after it.

The dead needed a container, somewhere to go, and the Spirit World had spontaneously emerged like a festering shadow to fulfill that need.

Yet in doing so, the World’s Will had accidentally created something beyond its complete authority.

It was an imperfection in the structure of existence itself. A bug in the universal code.

And Ethen, with his calculated, tyrannical mindset, thrived on exploiting bugs.

"Karth controls it now," Titan continued, gesturing to the grinning God Almighty. "But the Demi-humans have been trying to lay claim to it for a long time."

The dark projection of the Spirit World flashed with markers of conflict.

"We’ve fought several battles over it, and many of you here are already aware of those conflicts. Some of you even participated in them."

Several Angels nodded, grim memories of brutal, ethereal warfare flashing behind their eyes.

The struggle for the Spirit World wasn’t a new development. It had been a violent, endless point of contention between the two sides for ages, with neither willing to surrender its claim over such an important metaphysical territory.

However, the current revelation gave those old, bloody conflicts an entirely different, terrifying meaning.

"The World’s Will intends to take control of a portion of the Spirit World when the time comes," Titan explained, his heavy brow furrowing.

"It wants to use it to create a perfect world, so it has embedded itself deeply within that realm."

Titan turned his massive head towards Karth and smiled. It was a terrifying, feral expression on the face of a being with such foundational power.

"We can’t access the World’s Will directly from this physical planet. However, if we can strike it seriously within the Spirit World, we should be able to send it into shock."

The tactical implication was crystal clear.

They needed elite, strike-force individuals capable of infiltrating the heavily guarded Demi-human territories within the Spirit World.

They needed operatives who could locate the physical manifestation of the World’s Will, and violently attack it before it could complete its absolute fusion with Long.

It sounded incredibly simple when explained in a few sentences by a God Almighty.

In practice, however, it was an entirely different, nearly suicidal matter.

The World’s Will was an omniscient existence operating within the very framework it governed. Finding it inside a chaotic territory under its expanding influence would be nearly impossible.

Attempting to assault it while surrounded by its own conceptual power was another challenge entirely.

And failure would come at an unbearable, absolute cost.

A single, minor mistake could result in the immediate erasure of everyone involved.

Worse, those who entered the Spirit World risked being permanently rejected by the physical world itself, leaving their souls stranded beyond the realm where they had once lived.

They wouldn’t just be fighting an enemy. They would be fighting against destiny itself, challenging the very rules governing their lives.

"Any takers?"

Karth smiled, leaning forward.

He looked down at the assembled Angels with a gleeful expression of anticipation, completely unbothered by the existential dread that was actively suffocating the room.

Nobody immediately answered.

The Angels, beings of immense power who could level mountains with a thought, stared in silence, suddenly finding the void of the deep-space dimension very fascinating. The fear of true, conceptual death held their tongues hostage.

The God Almighty allowed the heavy, cowardly silence to linger for a long moment before adding another incentive.

"To spice things up," Karth purred, his voice dripping with cosmic temptation. "Whoever among the Angels agrees to undertake this mission will receive our help in becoming a God."