Chapter 138 | Reversal!

Chapter 138: 138 | Reversal!

The god’s smile returned, brighter now. "Ah, you’re right." He looked directly into Andrew’s eyes, and the void around them seemed to darken. "To become a god, you must kill one."

Andrew’s breathing stopped.

The white haired man laughed, a sound that echoed through the empty universe. "Of course, simply killing a god isn’t enough. Their Divinity won’t acknowledge you. Their Authority won’t become yours. The act of murder alone grants nothing but a corpse." His eyes shone with unmistakable pride, a fire that eight thousand years of isolation had not dimmed. "So I created another method. I hunted them, one after another. Nine gods. I slaughtered nine of them."

Andrew’s entire body stiffened. The number was incomprehensible. A single god was a force beyond mortal understanding. Nine?

"I extracted their Divinities," the ancient god continued, his voice growing fervent. "Then I used a forbidden technique to fuse all nine into my own soul. It was agony beyond description, a burning that reshaped my very existence. But when it was done..." A terrifying pressure erupted from his body, making Andrew’s phantom flicker wildly. "That is how I became a True God. The strongest among them."

His smile slowly widened, teeth glinting in the void. "So strong that every remaining god united against me. They couldn’t allow me to live. So they hunted me. They destroyed my divine body, shattered it into dust scattered across the cosmos."

He paused, letting the silence hang.

"But I escaped."

His fingers gently tapped his own chest. "I divided my soul into fragments. And this fragment has waited here, trapped in a sword at the heart of a dead domain, for over eight thousand years."

His golden eyes locked onto Andrew, and the suction suddenly intensified. The Divine Phantom slid closer, now only a few meters from being absorbed entirely. "Waiting for the perfect successor. No." He smiled, a predator’s final grin. "The perfect body."

Andrew slowly clenched his fists. The pieces fell into place with horrifying clarity. This palace of gold and diamond, this abandoned god domain, the black sword that had called to him, none of it had ever been an inheritance. It was a prison, carefully designed to lure in greedy souls seeking power. And he had walked right into it, chasing the promise of a domain to claim.

The white haired god tilted his head, watching Andrew’s realization with delighted amusement. "You understand now. Good. It’s so much more satisfying when they understand."

He raised his hands.

The moment he did, a pulling sensation.

Andrew watched as his golden body began to thin.

His divine phantom—the towering figure that represented his godhood—started to shrink. Slowly at first, then faster. The golden light dimmed. The edges of his form blurred and frayed, pieces of him breaking off and streaming toward the man’s outstretched hands like rivers of golden sand flowing into an ocean.

The man’s smirk widened.

Andrew’s body thinned. And thinned. And thinned even more.

His golden form, once proud and blazing, was now barely a flicker. A candle in the wind. A dying ember. The god’s absorption was relentless—pulling, pulling, pulling, draining every last drop of divine energy from Andrew’s being with the casual ease of someone drinking a glass of water.

The man chuckled softly. "Don’t resist. It will be over soon."

Andrew looked up at him.

And then—just as his divine body was about to fade completely—Andrew spoke.

"Upgrade Soul Fortification all the way to EX rank."

The god frowned.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, his expression shifting from smugness to confusion. His white hair swayed slightly as he tilted his head, studying Andrew with narrowed eyes. "What is—"

"Yes," Andrew said. His voice was calm. Steady. Completely unbothered by the fact that he was seconds away from being consumed. "Do it now."

For a single, frozen moment, nothing happened.

Then the world inside Andrew’s inner universe *erupted.*

A wave of power surged outward from Andrew’s divine core. His golden body, which had been thinning to nothing, stopped shrinking. Then it began to grow.

It grew.

Andrew’s divine form expanded like a balloon inflated by a hurricane as his body swelled, his soul power skyrocketed and his presence expanded until it filled every corner of his inner universe and pressed against its boundaries demanding more space.

The man’s smirk vanished.

His eyes went wide. His mouth fell open. His hands, still outstretched in the absorption posture, trembled violently as the flow of energy reversed.

"What the?" the man was shocked. "Whats happening?"

"You’re a god all along? Pretending to be sheep to eat the tiger?"

What’s happening? What is happening?"

He stumbled backward, his white suit rippling as though caught in a windstorm. His composure crumbled in an instant as he stared upward at the thing Andrew had become.

Because Andrew’s divine body was no longer tiny.

It was no longer small.

It was no longer comparable to the man’s.

It was more than twice the size of the god’s body.

Andrew looked down at the man. The god who had been looming over him moments ago now barely reached his waist. The great and ancient being who had waited eight thousand years for a successor was now staring up at Andrew with the wide, terrified eyes of a man who had just realized he had made a catastrophic mistake.

Andrew smirked.

"Don’t worry," he said, his voice booming through the inner universe like thunder. "You won’t understand."

He raised his hand.

A suction force materialized around him. a massive, swirling vortex of divine energy that centered on his palm and reached outward in every direction. It wrapped around the god like invisible chains, locking him in place, and then it began to pull.

Not Andrew’s soul this time.

The god’s.

The man’s expression contorted in horror. He could feel it—his soul, his essence was being dragged out of his body. Piece by piece. Strand by strand. The flow had reversed completely, and now he was the one being consumed.

"Wait!" the god screamed. "Wait, wait, wait a minute! Let me tell you something!"

Andrew didn’t stop. The suction force intensified.

"I have precious resources on me!" the god cried out, his voice cracking with desperation. "I have hidden my treasures—thousands of years of treasures—somewhere not even in this realm! I can take you to find them! Just let me live! It was a mistake! Please! It was a mistake!"

Andrew’s expression remained cold. Indifferent. The suction force continued to pull, steady and relentless, dragging the god’s soul toward him like a current pulling a drowning man downstream.

The god’s cries grew more frantic. More desperate. More pathetic.

"I have a slave technique!" he shrieked. "A slave technique you can use on me! You can enslave me! I promise! You can use it to bind me, control me, I’ll serve you forever—just let me live!"

Andrew frowned. The suction force slowed slightly—just a fraction—as he considered the offer. A slave technique. The ability to bind a god to his will. That was... tempting. Genuinely tempting.

But then he thought about it.

This god had waited eight thousand years. Had lured countless people to their deaths. Had tricked Andrew himself into feeding his divine energy into the sword. If Andrew spared him—enslaved him or not—this was a being who had spent millennia planning and scheming and surviving. Someone with that much patience, that much cunning, that much desperation to live, would find a way to break free eventually. And when he did, he would not be merciful.

The suction force increased.

The god screamed.

"Wait! Wait! What about the technique to becoming a god?!" His voice was shrill now, bordering on hysteria. "There is no way you can do it yourself! There is no way you can become a god on your own! Not without guidance! Not without the proper method!"

Andrew’s expression flickered. Just barely.

The god saw it. Hope ignited in his eyes like a match struck in darkness.

"With your talent, you can become a god!" he said rapidly, the words tumbling out of him like water from a broken dam. "I acknowledge that! Your talent is terrifying! But even with that talent, it would take you decades—centuries, maybe! But with my technique, with my method, it will reduce your time by half! Maybe even by two-thirds! Just let me live and I will teach you everything! I will tell you the technique! I swear it!"

Andrew was conflicted.

On one hand, this was exactly what he had come here for. The rumor. The technique to becoming a god. The reason he had entered this domain in the first place. It was real. It existed. And the man who held the knowledge was standing right in front of him, willing to trade it for his life.

On the other hand...

This god had tricks. Centuries of tricks. Millennia of tricks. If Andrew let him live—even enslaved, even bound—there was no telling what kind of contingencies he had prepared. What kind of failsafes. What kind of curses or traps or hidden mechanisms designed to activate the moment he was freed.