Chapter 220: The Lonely Supreme Being.

The moment the final word left Kael’s mouth, he poured the last remnants of his mana into the only escape he had left, Shadow Between Steps.

The instant he did, that familiar sensation wrapped around his body as space distorted and the world folded inward, the Void swallowing him whole and dragging his existence away from its current position.

The monk’s palm continued descending, striking nothing but the ground where Kael had previously stood. His golden eyes twitched, frustration finally appearing across his face.

But before he could pursue Kael, something changed beneath his feet.

A dangerous pulse traveled through the ground, and the monk froze, his eyes widening as he felt it. His head snapped downward, and the ground beneath him began to tremble.

He immediately spread his wings, but their movement was sluggish. He had already consumed an enormous amount of energy maintaining his current state and fighting Kael, leaving his body far from its peak. He needed to fly, he needed to get away, but he was too late.

The ground beneath his feet disappeared as a sphere of absolute extinction erupted upward, no fire, no smoke, no explosion in the conventional sense. Everything simply ceased to exist.

The monk’s body was caught directly within the center of the blast. His talismans vanished first, followed by his flesh, his robes, his golden wings and then even his scream was erased.

At that exact moment, Kael emerged from the Void, fifteen meters out, the absolute limit of his reach.

For one brief instant, his mind registered the fact that he had successfully escaped the monk’s attack. Then he saw the expanding sphere of nothingness.

The wave of absolute extinction continued expanding, devouring everything in its path. It swallowed the battlefield, it swallowed the monk, and now it was coming for Kael.

His eyes widened as he saw it closing in.

"Oh, fuck."

There wasn’t enough time to brace, barely enough time to curse. The blast reached him a heartbeat later, and his already damaged armor began shredding immediately.

The nano-material tore apart like wet paper, strips of metal and material peeling away from his body under the overwhelming force.

Kael’s body was in no better condition. His muscles were already pushed beyond their limits, his bones cracked, his ribs damaged, his health hanging by the thinnest thread.

Fortunately, he wasn’t at the center. The force that struck him was considerably weaker than what had annihilated the monk. It was still enough.

BOOM!

The shockwave ripped Kael from the ground, launching his body through the battlefield like a discarded rag. He couldn’t control his movement, couldn’t even properly protect himself.

His body slammed into the ground, then rolled, and rolled again, his battered form tumbling end over end across the shattered bone field until he finally crashed into a mound of broken bones.

Kael groaned. Pain filled every part of his body. For a few seconds, he simply lay there. Then strangely, the pain disappeared.

His fingers wouldn’t move, no matter how many times he tried.

Even breathing felt impossible, his lungs like they’d been filled with shattered glass, each breath shallow and barely making it through his damaged chest.

His vision blurred, the crimson sky above him pulsing between light and darkness, but Kael forced his eyes toward the battlefield, toward the crater where the monk had previously stood.

The monk himself was gone. Nothing remained, not a body, not a piece of clothing, not even a fragment of bone.

Kael stared at the empty crater. A thin stream of blood slowly pooled beneath his body, and his vision flickered as the world grew darker. Yet somehow, his lips slowly lifted.

A smile. Small, weak, but genuine.

"I won." The words barely escaped his throat.

The thought had barely finished forming when darkness began swallowing his consciousness. Somewhere within that fading awareness, Kael glimpsed a familiar blue screen flicker into existence before his fading vision.

[INVASION TRIAL COMPLETE.]

[Victory.]

Kael couldn’t read anything else. His consciousness disappeared, one last thought trailing behind it. What use was victory if he was about to die anyway?

Darkness completely settled over him. For what felt like an eternity, Kael knew neither light nor thought. There was no body, no pain, no sound, no sensation. He simply existed within an endless void of nothingness, his consciousness reduced to a blank point floating through darkness.

Then everything returned. Thought, sensation, awareness, memory, all of it came crashing back at once. Kael’s consciousness stirred, and his eyes opened.

He froze. There was nothing around him. Then light appeared, a single point emerging within the endless darkness. It expanded, unfolded, and became a world.

Kael stared, his mind struggling to comprehend what he was seeing. A vast cosmos stretched before him, seemingly without beginning or end, countless stars illuminating the darkness while galaxies spiraled across an immeasurable expanse.

Then life appeared. Planets formed, oceans emerged, life bloomed across worlds. Civilizations rose, kingdoms were built, cities covered entire planets. Then they disappeared.

Wars erupted. Species were born, species died. Civilizations collapsed, others rose from their ashes, and then another conquered them, and another conquered that one. Kael watched billions of years pass before his eyes within what felt like a single breath.

For a moment, he forgot everything. The Tower, the monk, his injuries, even himself. He simply watched.

Then everything changed. Darkness began spilling into the cosmos, not the peaceful darkness of empty space but something far worse. Murky, twisted, corrupted, it poured into the universe like an endless tide, spreading across galaxies and swallowing stars.

Kael watched the cosmos decay. No, decay wasn’t the right word. It was being erased. Piece by piece, existence itself disappeared.

Stars vanished, galaxies collapsed into nothing, worlds disappeared without leaving even dust behind. The once-vast cosmos became smaller and smaller as its light was consumed.

Then, at the very moment the last remnants of that light were beginning to fade, something appeared. A towering figure, surrounded by golden light, its form too immense and strange for Kael to properly comprehend. In one hand, it carried a scale.

The moment the darkness sensed its presence, it reacted. The corruption surged, an endless sea of darkness rising toward the golden being, swallowing everything in its path as it attempted to drown this new existence beneath its overwhelming mass.

The being didn’t move. It simply stood there, calm, unmoving, as the darkness surged closer. Then the scale in its hand suddenly pulsed, and golden light erupted from it.

The instant that light touched the corruption, the darkness burned away. Not pushed back, not defeated. Erased. Wherever the golden light passed, corruption simply ceased to exist.

The being moved forward, and another wave of darkness came, only to vanish. Another followed, gone just as fast.

The towering figure continued through the dying cosmos, and wherever it went, corruption simply ceased to exist.

Kael watched the scene unfold. It wasn’t a battle. It was a demolition, an absolute one-sided destruction. The corruption that had seemed capable of consuming the entire cosmos couldn’t even resist the golden being.

Eventually, the final traces of darkness disappeared. Everything stopped, and the cosmos became still. Yet Kael felt something strange.

He could sense the being, not physically, but something deeper, as though he could feel what it was feeling. And that feeling wasn’t victory, it wasn’t satisfaction, it wasn’t pride.

It was pain, deep and immeasurable, and loss, a loneliness so profound that Kael almost felt it himself.

The emotions were strangely familiar. Far too familiar. Kael’s consciousness trembled as he stared at the towering being.

"What the hell is going on now?"