Chapter 44: A Collapsing World

"You little wretch."

The Swallower Supreme had lost all calm.

He forgot all sophistication.

His hand rose up in a fist.

He squeezed once.

To hell with them all.

Whether from the Sage Realm or not.

The symbols dissipated directly into the void.

A mocking laughter resounded in the space around them.

"This is your punishment for hosting the Ancient Supreme in your little World. If I ever see any trace of that disgusting being around here again, little Swallower. I will destroy your world, I will destroy it thoroughly!"

That last part came out as a screech. Grating to the ears and the mind.

The Swallower Supreme had stopped caring about its nonsense, however.

He had long disappeared from that space.

He was now in the true outlands.

Not only him.

The seven other supremes had joined him.

Their auras at the max.

With every moment that passed, more supremes appeared.

All of them with their auras at full strength.

Both from the Immortal World and the Demon World.

They arrived.

Until every Supreme of the two Worlds now stood there in the true outlands.

The place where the Demon World and the Immortal World intersected.

They did not appear in the same space where the mortals usually went about their business, trying to gain the best they could from this wonderful place.

Nor where the immortals went about their own business, trying to transform this world to get what they desired.

They appeared in a place beyond the comprehension of both mortals and ordinary immortals.

The deepest void.

The very place where reality spoke its truth into existence.

The origin of everything.

Here, they all gathered.

In their sights were the intersections where both Worlds overlapped.

Where the new world that had been slowly forming had once been.

The source of the place called the true outlands.

That place now had a heartrending sight.

The slowly forming world.

One which once held a great promise.

It had collapsed.

Whatever potential it had cut off at the very root.

It wasn’t a violent collapse.

Neither was it an implosion.

Nor a decay that came with a sudden onset.

It was none of these.

The world, with every moment that passed, slowly scattered into the void.

All that held it together tearing apart at the very seams.

This was a collapse at the very root of reality.

The scattered pieces of the world slowly drifted into the ether.

Merging into the void.

To become nothing but another potential that was never realized.

"Swallower, what should we do?"

A supreme from the Demon World asked.

They had released their aura not to scare anyone.

It was to slow the disintegration of the world.

"Everyone, let’s gather the pieces before they dissipate. We will merge them into both Worlds."

There were sharp intakes of breath.

"Swallower, your World might have a mortal world where you can dump everything. Ours isn’t so cleanly demarcated."

The Swallower Supreme took a deep breath.

He knew that this wasn’t something that would be easy to implement.

The decision on what to do with the fragments was put aside for now.

The supremes gathered everything they could.

To them, this wasn’t something hard.

Almost nothing was lost to the ether.

That being of the void was the cause of all this.

When it had been battling the Ancient Supreme, it had set off a void collapse.

It no doubt had been a deliberate move on its part.

Whether it had been to punish the Immortal World and Demon World as it said, or to corner the Ancient Supreme.

The reason it had done it didn’t matter.

They were the ones suffering its effect now.

Then as if the ticking time bomb that was the void collapse hadn’t been enough.

Twenty more beings of the void had appeared.

Their very presence had exacerbated the void collapse.

Speeding up the process.

The true outlands couldn’t withstand it, it had sundered.

This wasn’t just about a world collapsing.

If it was, it wouldn’t have been enough to draw the attention of every supreme.

This world, however, was different.

It held a deep connection to both the Immortal World and the Demon World.

Sustained by both Worlds, its existence was deeply intertwined with theirs.

When it had collapsed.

A part of both Worlds had also collapsed.

This wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

These were super massive Worlds.

The small part that collapsed might seem inconsequential.

But with every moment that passed, the two Worlds also infinitesimallly dissolved.

This would continue until one day, the two Worlds would simply be no more.

One might wonder how the supremes never saw this coming.

How they had not noticed any trace of a void collapse, not until it destroyed such a precious world.

But it was no fault of theirs.

These beings of the void might no doubt be miserable wretches now.

But once upon a time.

Long ago, in a distant past, these now wretched beings were the very peak of the Void lineage.

Even now that they were no more than shadows of their past selves.

None in the Immortal World could match them in the domain of the void.

Not even those bearing the bloodline of Void.

*

His eyes opened.

It was no doubt into the sight of a new world.

A world he never knew existed.

Neo looked around him.

This was a bleak world.

Even the air had a smell to it.

A stale smell.

It felt like this world had been forgotten.

Like a forsaken room in a dungeon, and today someone had decided to open its doors for him.

He had no idea how long it had taken him to reach here.

Or how far from home he truly was.

The moment that quake had shook the legacy world.

The immortal had flung him away.

Far, far away.

Not through any conventional means.

But through space-time.

He had been teleported across a distance so vast it defied his comprehension.

Neo wasn’t unfamiliar with teleportation.

His exile into the mortal world had been a free teleportation ride after all.

It had also been very fast.

But this one had taken so long that he had closed his eyes just to pass the time.

The monotonous darkness that was on the inside of the teleportation channel had almost bored his mind to death.

There was also the constant motion his body experienced.

He had shut off every one of his senses just to get through that teleportation with as little discomfort as he could experience.

Only when he had felt the stillness. A sign that the teleportation had ended.

Only then, had he opened his eyes to witness this new world.

While he wondered what awaited him here, he felt a joy from a part of him that had gone silent.

Devour.

It was like this thing had never existed, when they were in the legacy world of that Immortal.

Now, it couldn’t have been more prominent.

Its presence radiated into every corner of this bleak world.

It was like the world had received a breath of new life.

The staleness that permeated every part of it slowly melted off like snow in the presence of the sun.

Or ice in the presence of fire.

That was the best way Neo could describe what happened.

Devour did more than just express its joy.

Neo’s forehead shone with a blinding golden light.

The golden light of the One-character bloodline.

Devour.