Date (Real World): Wednesday, March 1, 2025. 5:12 AM.
Location: The Wonder World — The Sanctuary of the Silver King.
The air in the Wonder World was usually uh bloody, carrying the scent of blood ozone and the quiet hum of stable reality. It was a dimension of rest, a pocket of safety carved out by the collective will of the rebellion. But as Null stood in the center of the safehouse, his gray eyes scanning his friends, the sweetness began to change.
"You're different, Null," Kai said, finally standing up and dusting off his knees. He looked at Null with a mixture of awe and a lingering trace of fear. "Your presence... even when you hide it, it feels like standing next to a sun that isn't quite hot yet."
Null looked at his hands. He felt the compression Satan had taught him working perfectly. The fangs were retracted, the scales were hidden beneath his skin, and the crimson glow of his Godhood was pushed deep into his marrow. But he could feel the pressure. He was a God trying to fit into the skin of a boy, and the tension was immense.
"I had to change," Null replied, his voice calm but layered with a strange, harmonic resonance. "Satan wasn't just a fighter. He was a warning. The King of Stone isn't playing games anymore."
Fang stepped forward, his blue eyes narrowing as he scanned the perimeter of the room. "You've stabilized the fusion, Null. But don't get comfortable. The Axiom is in flux. When a God is born, the universe notices. And so do the predators."
I. The Silent Incursion
The attack did not begin with an explosion. There was no sky-tearing rift or army of a sextillion demons.
It began with a Flower.
On the windowsill of the sanctuary sat a small, enchanted violet—a gift from Sooji's nature-coding experiments. It was a flower that was supposed to live forever, fueled by the ambient energy of the Wonder World.
As Null spoke, the violet didn't just wilt; it de-coded.
The vibrant purple of its petals turned a sickly, translucent grey. The stem didn't bend; it dissolved into a fine, black ash that smelled like stagnant water. Within seconds, the pot it sat in cracked, the clay turning back into raw, dry mud.
Null's Divine Intuition—the gift from the Path of Divine Grace—screamed a warning in the back of his mind. It wasn't a feeling of danger; it was a feeling of Wrongness.
"Everyone, get back," Null commanded. His voice dropped an octave, the authority of the Silver King rippling through the room.
"What is it?" Sooji asked, stepping toward the window.
"Don't touch it!" Null roared.
He moved faster than any of them could see. In a blur of white-silver light, he was at the window. He didn't use his hands; he manifested a small field of compressed kinetic energy to shield his friends.
He watched as the rot spread. It wasn't just the flower. The wooden frame of the window was beginning to pit and peel. The glass was turning cloudy, losing its molecular integrity.
"Fang," Null said, his grey eyes turning slightly sharp. "The barrier. Check the outer seal."
Fang closed his eyes, his consciousness reaching out to the dimensional walls of the Wonder World. His face went pale. "The barrier is intact, Null... but it's being filtered. Something is passing through the atoms of the shield. It's not an entity. It's a... frequency."
II. The Plague's Calling Card
High above the sanctuary, the sky of the Wonder World—usually a redish twilight—began to bruise. A sickly, greenish-yellow tint spread across the bloody clouds.
The "Bile" The Plague had launched from the Wasting Vault had arrived. It wasn't an army; it was a Conceptual Virus. It was the Entropy Code.
Suddenly, Kai collapsed again. He wasn't being crushed by pressure this time. He was coughing—a dry, hacking sound that produced flecks of black, ashen dust.
"My... my stone," Kai gasped, clutching his chest where his Kinetic Stone was embedded. "It's... cold. It feels like it's sleeping."
Null's heart turned to ice. He realized the horror of the Second General. Satan attacked the body, but The Plague attacked the Source. He was rotting the very stones that gave them their power.
"He's here," Null whispered.
He didn't wait. He could no longer afford to stay human.
"Fang, take them to the lower bunkers. Seal them in a Void-lock. Now!"
"What about you?" Ashley cried out, her eyes wide with terror as she saw the wallpaper of the room begin to curl and turn to dust.
"I'm going to meet him," Null said.
He stepped out onto the balcony of the sanctuary. As he did, he let go of the Compression.
V-R-R-R-T!
The air around him ignited. The silver-white hair flared, the dark scales appear in his arm, and his eyes snapped into that terrifying, divine Crimson. The black cross pupils focused, scanning the sky with Sanctified Physiology.
He saw it.
In the distance, standing on the very edge of the horizon where the sky met the sea, was a small, robed figure. The figure wasn't moving. It was just standing there, letting the wind carry the rot from its body toward the sanctuary.
The Plague was miles away, but through Null's heightened senses, they were standing face-to-face.
III. The God vs. The Rot
Null manifested his scythe, the black mark on his arm glowing as the weapon tore itself into reality. But even the scythe looked different—the blade was now etched with the white veins of the merged Prime Stones.
"You're the one," Null's voice boomed, carrying across the miles through the resonance of the Blood Sea. "The one the King sent to clean up Satan's mess."
Across the distance, the robed figure tilted its featureless porcelain head. The single amber eye in its chest blinked.
"Mess?" The Plague's voice echoed directly inside Null's mind, bypassing his ears. It was a wet, rattling sound. "Satan was a sculptor of clay. I am the rust that claims the iron. I am the entropy that the Almighty forgot to delete."
The Plague raised a finger. The miles of grass and forest between him and Null didn't catch fire; they simply ceased to be. The green turned to grey, the grey turned to dust, and the dust vanished into the wind. A path of absolute nothingness was being carved straight toward the sanctuary.
"You are a New God, Null," The Plague hissed. "You are full of potential, full of 'Life.' Tell me... how long can your new heart beat when I teach it the concept of 'Old Age'?"
The green-veined hand of the General pointed at Null.
Null felt it—a sudden, sharp chill in his black arm. The white veins, usually so bright, dimmed for a fraction of a second. The Entropy Code was trying to infect the Prime Stone.
Null gripped his scythe, his crimson eyes burning with a cold, divine fury. He realized that against The Plague, speed and strength were secondary. This was a battle of Definition. He had to define himself as "Eternal" faster than the General could define him as "Expired."
"I am the Silver King," Null declared, his aura flaring into a massive, protective pillar of light that pushed back the yellow fog. "And I don't rot."
He leaped from the balcony, a streak of silver lightning heading straight for the center of the decay. The war had officially moved from the physical to the existential.
End of chapter 76
See you next time