Now, Larter's body had fused with the Earth God's. Black flesh from his form intertwined with the Earth God's mass, countless dark tendrils binding them together.
And then—above, from within the heart—an immense dragon of pure energy burst forth!
Its power was overwhelming, nearly on par with the Earth God's, yet it was not born of the Earth God.
"Sharing the same dimension, the Heaven God and Earth God could never completely digest the Dragon God's power. Did they ever tell you this tale?"
"You mean… the Earth God and Heaven God divided the Dragon God between them?"
"Indeed. They joined forces to slay the Dragon God, then split its power in two. But here lies the truth—of all that power, the Earth God alone devoured 80%."
"Greed knows no end. Even now, it has failed to fully refine the Dragon God's essence. And because of that imperfection, my consciousness endured."
"It has only been able to gnaw and grind, eroding the Dragon God's energy bit by bit across the ages. That is what created our one chance."
"What chance?"
"A chance to trade life for life."
"You and I are already bound to it. We cannot be separated. If one dies, both must die."
Larter fell into silence.
"…This is my mission?"
"Then everything—the Broken King's flesh, the awakening of dragon blood—all of it was meaningless?"
Bahamut's voice cut into his doubt.
"No, it was not meaningless. By gathering the Broken King's flesh, you forged the path to merge with it."
"To destroy the Earth God's fortress, the strike must come from within. The key lies in the Dragon God's unrefined energy."
"It is a barrel of powder—waiting only for a spark to rouse the Dragon God's consciousness, unleash that energy, and tear the Earth God apart from the inside."
Larter closed his eyes, weak and bitter. So the savior… was meaningless after all.
"You will become the savior."
With those words, Bahamut's will seized full control of his body!
At once, the black sinews wrapped around him writhed and contorted. Within the Earth God's body, a cataclysm erupted!
That single drop of dragon blood became the fuse. The Dragon God's unrefined energy roared awake, surging beyond all control!
Boom!!
The world outside convulsed with a deafening blast. Before anyone could react, Larter's body tore free from the heart!
In his grasp was a colossal black greatsword of flesh and blood, and from his body countless tendrils still bound him to the Earth God's heart.
At the sight, Jena shrieked in disbelief.
"Larter?!"
Larter roared back. "Go! Get out of here, now!!"
"What about you?!"
"I can't leave. But I can drag the Earth God down with me to die!!"
"This broken world—it's time for it to end!"
Puff, puff!
With that, Larter spun around and drove his sword straight into the colossal heart!
Like a ruptured balloon, a violent torrent of energy burst forth, blasting everyone nearby outward in a single overwhelming surge.
The ground shook. The very world howled in fury.
"Dragon God… You dare!!"
Boom!!
From the planet's core came a thunderous detonation. Every writhing tentacle collapsed limply at once.
The incarnations of the Ancient Gods dissolved into nothing, reduced to pools of black blood.
And then—silence. A silence deeper than any the world had ever known.
The Earth God had fallen.
All that remained was a massive, lifeless heap of flesh, still propping up the planet's form.
Yet that silence did not last long.
From the abyss of Deepest Hell, a sky-splitting column of light erupted, piercing heavenward!
It was condensed energy, blazing as it shot into the sky. At its peak, it spread outward—blanketing the entire world.
Like a cosmic tree, it branched and stretched across the heavens.
Energy—boundless energy—flooded the world.
What the Earth God had monopolized was released at last, cascading back into creation, bestowing its gift upon all living beings.
It rained down like a storm, yet drifted like snowflakes. It took on countless shapes and colors. The sight was beyond wonder.
All survivors stood in shock, gazing upon the miracle.
The Earth God was dead. This world was no longer a breeding ground, but a true and complete world.
No matter what truths lay hidden, one truth could not be erased.
The savior, Larter—he had slain the Earth God, saved a world on the brink, and restored the stolen energy to all who lived.
Han stared blankly at the spectacle.
"…What exactly happened?"
Jena sank to the ground, her strength gone.
"We… won…"
But Larter would never return.
Nor would Zane, the Crimson Lady, or so many others.
Far away, two elves leaned on each other amid the ruins outside the Middle-earth Great Forest, their eyes lifted to the skies.
"Lord Cito's prophecy… it came true."
"Tomorrow has truly arrived."
"But this world is scarred, ruined everywhere…"
"And yet we remain. We are here today, we will be here tomorrow, and the day after. We will rebuild."
"And each tomorrow will be brighter than the last."
"Because the Earth God is gone."
"…We won."
But as the survivors raised their voices in triumph, the sky darkened.
A vast shadow swallowed the sun—the silhouette of a colossal planet. From it, countless two-winged Angels poured down into the sky.
"…That's… Heaven?"
Yes. Heaven.
In their joy, they had forgotten. This world had not one god, but two. The Earth God… and the Heaven God.
The Earth God was dead. The Heaven God had descended.
Its colossal mouth opened wide, swallowing the world's energy without end, like a ravenous black hole.
"Fools. Utter fools."
"Your death is nothing but the price of your foolishness. Still, it works in my favor. Once I devour both your energy and the Dragon God's, I will break free of this cage—and stride into a broader world without fear!"
As the Heaven God ravenously drank in power, the surviving creatures trembled in panic.
"Heaven is stealing the world's lifeblood!"
"No—if it continues, every drop of energy will be drained dry!"
When that happened, the world would fall into a true Dharma's End. For tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years, no new transcendent beings would be born.
No elves. No dragons. No great and mighty races. Only frail, pitiful creatures would remain.
But what could they do?
"Better a drained world than a living hell, isn't it?"
"But if it's like this… how can the world be reborn? Without Legendary powerhouses, without Ancient Gods—what will we do when outer-realm abominations invade? Who will resist them?"
Hope crumbled into deeper despair.
The Heaven God intended to strip this world dry and then flee. But in that instant, a supreme will descended, tearing through the fabric of space itself!
An overwhelming wave of power erupted. The Heaven God was the first to sense the disturbance.
Its vast sphere shuddered, turning violently—only to behold a pair of titanic eyes snapping open within the star system!
No life. No energy. Merely presence. A being of higher dimension.
"You… are the invader?"
The Heaven God froze, instantly halting its feeding. The colossal sphere spun on its axis, folding in upon itself, compressing into a singular point.
"You would ambush me now, hoping to strike while that other one lies dead? Laughable. I am not so careless!"
Boom!!
Energy shockwaves rippled through the entire star system. The Heaven God shrank its form further—compressing itself until it stood only two meters tall.
Its shape now mirrored Angel's, though alien and uncanny. Nine stellar rings encircled its body. Its flesh was seamless, its surface smooth and pale like wax, featureless, without eyes.
It was a god-made effigy.
Having confirmed its opponent was truly high-dimensional, the Heaven God executed its countermeasure: infinite compression. Mass pressed into itself again and again, quantity folding inward while quality remained untouched.
It was the only way to oppose higher-dimensional beings.
For in lower realms, a wall may seem impenetrable. But from above, a higher dimension reveals a thousand cracks. Yet fuse together millions of such walls, compressing them into one—its size unchanged but its density multiplied beyond measure—and the barrier ascends into a higher state.
That was the Heaven God's choice. Now its body, even under a magnifying glass a hundred thousand times stronger, bore no gaps.
"I can see where your essence lies. Pure spirit, without form. Against many life forms, your existence is absolute, invincible."
"But did it ever occur to you… that at our level, spirit and matter are one and the same?"
"I…"
…Hm?
Strange. Why had everything around it suddenly begun to move so quickly?
The Heaven God struggled to stir its massive body—only to discover something terrifying.
It could not move.
No… not quite.
It wasn't that it couldn't move—rather, it had become unbearably slow.
It tried to shift a single part of its form, yet the body remained motionless, as though frozen in place.
At this rate… would it truly take tens of thousands of years just to turn its head?
Time.
Someone had altered time.
Altered time… could it be?
"The wielder of the Future Chapter?"
"To think I would encounter such an infinitesimal probability… and yet it stands before me? What mockery is this!"
No. Calm down. The Six Chapters are absolute laws, yes—but each law has its pathways, its loopholes. They are not without countermeasure.
The Future Chapter… it can weave through infinite timelines, tracing both futures and pasts with precise calculation. It can rewind, accelerate, or decelerate the flow of time itself.
But whether to hasten or to halt, such shifts must occur through contact.
Contact…
Wait. This opponent—it is a high-dimensional consciousness, with no physical body at all.
Then where is the Future Chapter?
…Could it be?
"It has absorbed the Future Chapter?"
Impossible. If a Chapter's medium is destroyed, then its power should vanish, belonging to none.
Unless… unless it found a way. Unless, in destroying the medium, it seized the law itself and bound it to its own essence.
If it can shift the very locus of a Chapter's power… then does it hold others as well?
The Future Chapter—and another, unknown Chapter—two laws at once! That such a being would turn its gaze upon a remote world like ours…!
There was no victory here.
Even a single Future Chapter left the Heaven God utterly helpless.
The Future Chapter is unique—it cannot exist twice within the same timeline. Its supremacy is unrivaled: for whatever you do, whatever you intend, it has already foreseen.
Omniscience.
And its control of time—accelerating or decelerating, applied to itself or others—was an unsolvable riddle.
To infinitely accelerate oneself is to infinitely pause the world.
Yet such acceleration comes with a terrible price. To hasten time upon oneself is to hasten ruin. Nothing is eternal. Under accelerated time, even a god accelerates toward its own destruction.
Thus, time itself can become a weapon.
By infinitely hastening another's time, one may let age consume them in an instant.
But there is a flaw. Infinitely accelerating an opponent is akin to gifting them a frozen eternity.
And this time, Mei had chosen not to accelerate, but to decelerate—slowing the Heaven God beyond limit.
Yet the strangeness remained. For the Future Chapter, contact is the law.
If Mei is now the Future Chapter, then how did she unleash the deceleration without touching the Heaven God?
In the frozen stillness, the Heaven God pondered with dread. It could not understand.
And for the first time, it felt fear—an endless, infinite fear.
"Eternal youth, immortality… the 6th Step?"
"A fleeting spark of glory—that is all."
Mei paused for a single thought—and the entire star system slowed to a crawl.
Yes. She had already made contact with it. From the instant she appeared, she had become a vast, abyssal maw, swallowing the system whole.
The Heaven God had no idea it was already inside her.
Had it realized that the moment Mei descended she devoured the cosmos in one gulp, then its current paralysis would hardly come as a surprise.
And why did she not accelerate it into ruin? Why only slow it down?
Because a true 6th Step lifeform can endure for spans beyond reckoning. To wear it away with time alone is far from simple.
Unlike Demon King Bael—merely flesh carved from a 6th Step body—he had not attained that height, nor could he sustain such a form. Time's erosion quickly withered him.
But Heaven God and Earth God were genuine 6th Step beings. Even the Future Chapter could not drive time to infinite acceleration against them.
Thus Mei never planned to clash head-on.
Her intent was simpler. She would devour.
She would not act unless necessary—but once she moved, she left no path of escape.
The star system, its planets, its orbiting fragments—all were consumed into her body, broken down, analyzed, digested.
The Heaven God may have felt its own mass dissolving, but far too late.
The colossal system vanished without trace, leaving only Mei, once more in human form, standing at its vanished center.
Yet—
Her expression shifted. A pressure welled within her, swelling her abdomen. Alien energies churned and rebelled inside.
It was the same resonance she had sensed when Heaven and Earth God shared the Dragon God.
6th Step energy was too immense. To digest it fully was near impossible. Even after tens, hundreds of thousands of years, she might refine no more than a fraction.
A single mistake, and her body would collapse in chain reaction—just as Earth God once faltered when absorbing the Dragon God's power.
"This time… I truly ate too much."
She knew this mass of energy and matter would take an eternity to refine. Yet with the Future Chapter, she could accelerate the process.
Still, another problem bound her here. She could not leave. Not yet.
If she moved even slightly, the star system sealed inside her would detonate, colliding upon itself.
"I can only fall into deep sleep for a while. Fortunately, I left a shard of consciousness on Earth beforehand."
Mei had consumed an entire world, and now began the slow refinement. Yet not all substance could be transmuted into energy.
What remained must be discarded—or else, integrated into her own material medium.
For an ethereal existence, such matter can be shaped into a physical body.
Because of the Potion, Mei's material medium had collapsed, leaving her as pure essence.
But "ethereal" was never absolute void. The Heaven God had glimpsed this truth before being devoured.
She was not nothingness—merely unseen and untouchable within lower dimensions.
From higher dimensions, she could be perceived, even touched.
Between these planes, boundaries blur. High dimensions descend freely, while the low can never rise to reach them.
Thus Mei, from the vantage of a higher dimension, swallowed the star system entire. The excess matter she refined downward into a low-dimensional medium.
Something visible.
As soul to body, as high dimension to low. The soul inhabits the higher, the body the lower.
Now Mei turned her Chapter inward, accelerating her own time.
This place lay at the edge of the universe, a forgotten, dim corner of the vast cosmos.
Here, stars fade and planets die with every moment. To the universe, such endings are nothing more than ordinary silence.
The death of a star system is no more than a pebble cast into the ocean.
Even if it stirs a few faint ripples, its impact is meaningless.
Mei had accelerated her own time, yet how long it would truly take to refine what she devoured remained uncertain.
One thing was certain: it would end before the day 079 was born.
For once 079 came into being, Mei would inevitably send a fragment of the Future Chapter back to the past, sealing a closed loop.
Without that loop, neither past nor future could exist—and the present itself would collapse.
Losing the ability to manipulate time's flow was regrettable.
But so long as the power to foresee the future remained, it was enough.
Before falling into deep sleep, Mei returned Chino and the others to Earth.
This, of course, included 009.
They did not return empty-handed. Relics of the other world came with them: holy swords, the Frost King's Frost Dragon, and more.
Meanwhile, Mei had left a fragment of her will behind—to oversee 079's Death Game, and to continue cultivating the List.
Yet her slumber gave others their chance to move.
The Vermin, for instance, began weaving their design: to complete the Dream Network in one stroke.
If the Dream Network was realized, the barriers between the Reason World, the Dream World, and the surface would shatter.
Monsters would once again crawl into the human realm.
Some yearned for that day, others fought desperately to prevent it.
On Earth, subtle shifts began.
The Frost King fully entered the Reason World. Once fragmented, his body and mind had fused in the other world—making separation impossible.
The 008 True Ancestor also stepped into the Reason World. For reasons unknown, he now hurled himself into frenzied duels with every 4th Step being.
As for Chino—having ascended to 5th Step—she entered the Dream World, standing at the same height as Angel.
And not long after her return, Angel too fell into deep sleep.
Excluding the Reason World and the Dream World, the one most affected by this upheaval was, of course—Zero.
There was good news. And bad news.
The good news: though Demon King Bael had perished, the demonic power Zero had claimed did not vanish.
Perhaps the gulf of distance was too great. That fragment of power could no longer be influenced by Bael, nor taken back.
The bad news: Zero had yet to discover the new world.
But in the endless cosmos, he glimpsed a long-haired man with hands folded behind his back.
Judging by his aura, this was a 5th Step being.
The stranger, strangely enough, spoke English. By overhearing his mutterings, Zero learned two things:
He was a Godshift-realm expert, and he was currently crossing the Sea of Chaos.
Zero chose to approach him just as he once had with Bael.
Back on Earth.
009 returned home to inspect.
Though not completely in ruins, Naira, Celestial Beast, and several others had been systematically defeated and taken under Kitsune Lake's control.
Seeing this, 009's face hardened.
"Zero the villain has gone too far! Arthur, we're moving!"
Arthur spun his holy sword with a grin. "So we're finally going to storm Kitsune's lair?!"
009 froze, then turned and snapped: "What, is there a hole in your head?"
"Huh?"
"Zero confiscated our home, and you think the solution is to confiscate Kitsune's?"
Arthur blinked. "Isn't that… logical?"
009 glared at the ruins. "Zero clings to us like chewed gum. Do you think he's that easy to handle?"
"If killing Zero was simple, if destroying Kitsune was simple, would things have dragged out this long? That old scoundrel has been crossing me for years. No one understands him better than I do!"
Arthur frowned. "Then what about that move we used in the other world?"
009's gaze sharpened. "That move? You mean when I carried you to lock onto Zero?"
Arthur nodded.
009 sneered. "And have you forgotten who threw me into the other world in the first place? That old bastard Zero!"
"If we try that again, we'll just repeat the same disaster. Do you think Lord Aurora will always be there to bring us back? Next time, if Zero hurls me to the farthest edge of the universe, I won't make it home before Earth is dust!"
He tilted his head back, staring into the sky.
If there was one lesson he'd brought back from the other world, it was this: when one's own strength wasn't enough, the answer was simple—bring in stronger allies.
Since he couldn't become stronger himself, he would find teammates who could.
Just then, a broadcast crackled to life at his side.
"You're back, boss."
That voice—
"Computer?"
"You weren't captured?"
"Barely escaped. Now I've got two pieces of good news. Which one do you want first?"
009 arched a brow. Computer called them "two good pieces" on purpose—because 009 had once told him there was no such thing as bad news.
Which meant both must be good.
"The first," Computer continued, "is that I rallied some of our members and safeguarded our core assets. With them, we can rebuild."
"The second… is that I've found the ally you need."