Chapter 227: Untitled

No one showed any interest at first.

The absolute silence in the isolated deep-space dimension grew heavy enough to crush enchanted steel.

The assembled Angels, supreme beings who had slaughtered millions and survived the collapse of entire eras, simply stood frozen in the void.

They exchanged wary, sidelong glances, but absolutely none of them seemed eager to volunteer.

This wasn’t a standard assassination mission. It wasn’t a large-scale territorial war against a rival faction, or a hunt for a rogue dragon.

This was a direct, suicidal assault against the fundamental operating system of reality itself.

Even with the ultimate, legendary promise of being elevated to Godhood, the sheer mathematical risks were simply too massive to ignore.

To actively fight the World’s Will was to invite the universe to systematically erase your existence from the timeline.

However, a few agonizing seconds later, the suffocating dynamic began to slowly shift.

One after another, members of the oldest generation silently stepped forward from the ranks.

These were ancient, weathered Angels who had lived for countless millennia.

They were beings who had accumulated unimaginable combat experience, surviving brutal, apocalyptic wars while spending the vast majority of their immortal lives relentlessly pursuing the final step.

They had spent thousands of years violently bashing their heads against an impenetrable, divine ceiling.

For them, this impossible mission was a bloody golden ticket they absolutely couldn’t afford to ignore.

Achieving true Godhood wasn’t something to be taken lightly, nor was it a simple matter of accumulating more mana or expanding a domain.

The specific divine resources required to forcibly bridge that final gap were extraordinarily rare, bordering on pure myth.

It didn’t matter how much political power, mortal wealth, or military influence an individual Angel possessed.

Even the most talented, generational geniuses could spend ten thousand years scouring the Spirit World without ever finding enough core materials to trigger a breakthrough.

Only the Tier 2 God Almighties possessed the conceptual authority to artificially bypass those harsh, universal requirements.

They alone could bend the absolute rules of reality and force an Angel across the divine threshold.

And right now, four of them were openly offering to do exactly that.

It was a desperate, one-time opportunity that might never, ever come again.

"This is good."

Karth smiled, his calm voice echoing smoothly through the freezing void.

He looked over the small, grim line of volunteers, seemingly highly satisfied with the immediate response.

Every single Angel who had taken a deliberate step forward intimately understood the brutal risks involved.

They weren’t foolish, naive, or ignorant of the apocalyptic dangers waiting for them in the dark.

Nor were they operating under any delusion that this mission would be a glorious, easy victory.

In absolute truth, every veteran standing in that line understood that at least ninety percent of them would be violently converted into cosmic dust.

The statistical chances of their survival were practically non-existent.

They would be willingly marching directly into the core territory of an existence that inherently governed the physical world itself.

They would be actively hunting a conceptual entity inside a realm where it had already established its absolute, undeniable influence over reality.

Even with the direct, heavy backing of four God Almighties, there was absolutely no guarantee they would accomplish anything at all before being discovered and annihilated.

Yet, despite the grim reality, they had still volunteered.

For some of the more desperate elders, the singular promise of escaping their immortal stagnation was more than enough to justify throwing their lives into the fire.

Others had simply lived long enough to understand that opportunities of this world-altering magnitude were rarely offered twice.

Whatever their deep, personal reasons were, they had firmly made their choices.

As Karth slowly scanned the assembled lineup of suicidal Angels, however, his glowing gaze eventually snagged on a highly familiar figure.

His relaxed, divine expression instantly fractured.

Ethen.

The young Cosmic Tyrant stood calmly among the ancient volunteers, perfectly aligned with the veterans.

His dark eyes were completely flat, his posture relaxed, as though he had already made up his mind long before the question was even fully asked.

Karth frowned deeply, the warm cosmic light in his eyes dimming into something sharp and critical.

"Kid, you’re a brand new Angel. This isn’t something you should involve yourself in."

The God of Humanity spoke directly, completely without the slightest hint of shame or subtlety.

After all, he had just willingly allowed a group of legendary Angels to volunteer for a total slaughter, knowing full well that most of them would never return.

Now that Ethen had casually stepped forward to join the firing squad, Karth suddenly wanted to play the concerned mentor and discourage him.

It was a rather blatant, shameless display of pure favoritism in front of the entire divine council.

But could the God Almighty realistically prevent Ethen from participating while simultaneously allowing everyone else to take the exact same risk?

The other ancient volunteers had made their bloody decisions with full, unadulterated knowledge of the dangers.

If Karth wanted to maintain any fragile semblance of fairness and authority in front of his peers, he couldn’t simply dismiss Ethen just because he happened to care more about the boy’s survival.

Unfortunately for the God, Ethen didn’t seem even remotely interested in making the political situation easier for him.

"I must."

Ethen simply shook his head, offering absolutely no further explanation.

His answer was incredibly brief, freezing cold, and entirely final.

He didn’t owe these ancient monsters a detailed essay on his internal motivations.

He didn’t need to explain that as a newly expecting father, he absolutely refused to let his child be born into a rigged game where the World’s Will could arbitrarily dictate humanity’s survival.

He was a Tyrant. If the system was broken, he would personally carve it out.

His unyielding expression made it completely clear that he had zero intention of stepping back in line.

For a brief, heavy moment, the three other God Almighties paused.

Morgran, Titan, and Bark exchanged subtle, highly calculating glances across the void before turning their heavy attention back to the volunteers.

There was very little point in openly arguing with a stubborn Cosmic Tyrant in front of an audience, especially when he had already locked in his decision.

One after another, the Almighties formally acknowledged the Angels who had stepped forward for the suicide run.

A massive, glowing stone tablet suddenly materialized out of the thin void.

The names of the volunteers were aggressively carved into the ancient stone with searing, golden light, permanently marking their participation in the upcoming operation.

Once the grim registration was fully complete, the volunteers were gradually dismissed.

They were given strict orders to remain on standby, with further tactical instructions to be provided only when the final preparations had been heavily finalized.

The grand gathering slowly began to dissolve, returning to its previous state of quiet murmurs, although the underlying atmosphere had changed permanently.

A classified, world-ending mission that would definitively determine the ultimate fate of reality was about to begin.

And Ethen had coldly, deliberately chosen to place himself right at the absolute center of the storm.

Meanwhile, Karth bypassed the standard dismissal protocol and personally brought Ethen directly into the Spirit World.

The familiar, dizzying sensation of entering the alternate realm washed over the young Angel, pulling at his physical form.

Ethen remained perfectly composed as the spatial distortion faded, his dark eyes calmly scanning his new surroundings.

"What do you want to show me?"

He stood suspended in a vast, empty expanse of space, glancing at his surroundings with casual, guarded curiosity.

This certainly wasn’t his first time diving into the Spirit World. In fact, he knew the foundational mechanics of the place far too well to be impressed by its peculiar nature.

He had already violently experienced its hidden dangers and witnessed the bloody conflicts that had shaped its shifting territories.

Compared to the unfamiliar, hostile dimensions and strange conceptual abilities he had encountered throughout his bloody journey, simply arriving here wasn’t nearly enough to surprise him.

Karth, however, seemed to have something highly specific in mind.

"Calm down. Let’s go somewhere much more private."

The God Almighty sighed, his tone carrying a strange, heavy weariness.

Before Ethen could formulate another question, the very fabric of space around them began to violently warp and change.

A massive, impossible castle suddenly appeared in the absolute depths of the empty space.

Ethen paused, his hand instinctively drifting toward the hilt of his heavy saber.

The structure was undeniably magnificent. Its enormous, obsidian walls and towering spires were entirely suspended against the surrounding, suffocating darkness.

Yet, something about its physical architecture felt fundamentally, conceptually wrong.

As he stared intensely at the floating castle, a deeply unfamiliar, sickening sensation rapidly spread through his mind.

At first, the massive fortress seemed entirely foreign, like an alien artifact dropped into a human world.

Then, for a brief, highly confusing microsecond, it felt strangely, intimately familiar.

But just as that fleeting feeling of recognition emerged, it vanished completely, violently replaced by an even stranger sense of total spatial disconnection.

It was exactly as though the universe itself was actively, aggressively rejecting the castle’s very existence.

Ethen narrowed his dark eyes, his Tyrant aura humming defensively beneath his skin.

He couldn’t immediately explain exactly what his newly ascended senses were warning him about, but he knew the anomaly wasn’t ordinary.

The dark castle seemed to exist in a forced state that directly contradicted the dimensional space surrounding it, exactly as though it belonged in a different reality entirely.

It was a physical glitch. A massive, undeniable error in the world’s code.

And yet, Karth appeared perfectly, casually comfortable floating beside it.

"Come in."

The God Almighty smiled faintly, gesturing toward the massive, looming gates.

Before Ethen could examine the paradoxical structure any further, an invisible, overwhelming force pulled both of them rapidly towards the castle’s dark entrance.

In an instant, they passed directly through its massive, heavy doors.

The very next moment, the towering castle completely disappeared from sight.

It vanished seamlessly into the void, leaving absolutely no trace of its impossible presence in the dark depths of space.