[A/N]: The Second GOAL of the week is to achieve 500 Power Stones and unlock TWO more bonus chapters. Comment, share, and you know the drill 😎✨
Jay didn't hesitate and didn't even check if Brian was alive.
He rushed forward again. His blade swept in a devastating arc aimed directly at Selene's neck. The strike was meant to decapitate. To end this in one blow and kill an External who'd lived for thousands of years.
Her magical barriers came up instantly. Layer upon layer of protection, each one strong enough to stop artillery shells. Defensive spells that had been refined over centuries. Protection that had kept her alive through the fall of empires. All of it powered by this dimension itself where she was effectively a god.
Jay's strike connected and her barriers shredded like tissue paper.
The anti-magical properties of Murasama didn't just cut through mystical defenses. They negated the very concept of magical protection. Each layer simply ceased to exist as his blade passed through it, unmade at the fundamental level. Spells that should have held became nothing.
Selene threw herself backward off her throne. The movement was frantic, ungraceful and desperate in a way she hadn't been in centuries. Terror finally replaced ancient pride.
Jay's blade missed her throat by inches. Close enough that a thin line of blood appeared where the edge had barely grazed her perfect skin.
Before he could follow through, red strings wrapped around his arms.
Jamie Braddock stood where he'd materialized, reality warping around him like heat shimmer. Both hands extended, fingers splayed as dozens of reality-warping threads connected him to Jay, each one pulsing with power that could unmake life itself. His dead eyes, still crimson and empty, fixed on Jay with mechanical focus.
The strings tightened and constricted. Jamie's power surged, and reality itself bent to his will. The fundamental laws of physics started to unwrite themselves around Jay's body. The very concept of "Jay" began to blur at the edges, his existence becoming uncertain and his probability of survival collapsing toward zero.
Atoms should have begun separating, and molecular bonds should have dissolved. Even his very existence should have started to erase, reality forgetting he'd ever been born.
But against all expectations, nothing happened.
Jay stood completely still. The strings remained wrapped around his arms, glowing with enough power to rewrite laws of world. But they might as well have been ordinary rope for all the effect they had. His adaptation to Cosmic power, like Franklin's and his newfound resistance to reality warping, made Jamie's manipulation felt lacking, as if a child trying to move a giant.
Jamie pulled harder. Confusion flickered behind the dead eyes as his corrupted mind couldn't understand as more strings manifested, wrapping around Jay's torso, his legs and finally his neck. The air shimmered with exotic energies as reality tried and failed to rewrite itself. The pocket dimension itself groaned under the strain, its walls cracking and the heartbeat pulse stuttering.
Still nothing.
"Again." Selene's voice was shrill. Desperate in a way that made her sound mortal again. "Use everything! Unmake him! Tear him apart at the quantum level! Make him never have existed!"
Jamie obeyed. His entire body began to glow crimson as he channelled every ounce of reality-warping power he possessed. The kind of power that could reshape nations, that could make water flow uphill and fire burn cold, and that could convince the universe that the difference between being dead and alive was merely his whim. The strings multiplied, became hundreds, then thousands. The pocket dimension itself began to warp under the strain of so much localized reality manipulation. The obsidian platform started to melt and the screaming faces in the columns began to scream for real.
But Jay just turned his head slowly and deliberately, looking directly at Selene through the web of red strings. His crimson eyes blazed with power and pure violence.
His smile was as cold as the smile of a predator that had cornered its prey and knew it.
"Your tactics mean nothing. Your planning is worthless." His voice cut through the dimension like a blade through silk. Each word deliberate and nail in her coffin. "This form negates your magic completely. My null field shuts down mutant abilities before they can touch me." He paused, letting the implications sink in like poison. "And after adapting to cosmic-scale reality warping during the resurrection? After having that kind of power run through my body for hours while bringing back twelve hundred souls?" His smile widened, showing too many teeth. "This low-level shit isn't even an itch."
He flexed.
The red strings broke with a wail. One moment, they were there, glowing with impossible power. The next they were gone, unable to maintain coherence against someone whose body had been permanently altered by exposure to forces that could create entire universes.
The backlash hit Jamie like a physical blow. He staggered and gasped as the strings unravelled back into his hands with enough force to tear skin. Blood welled up from his palms where the strings had been anchored.
Jay started walking toward Selene. Each step taken deliberately, like a hunter who knew the prey had nowhere left to run. His transformed body left footprints of light energy on the obsidian, burning patterns into stone that should have been indestructible.
The black sorcerers finally charged.
Hundreds of corrupted magic users, each one individually capable of leveling city blocks, attacked as one. The sound of their footsteps created thunder, and their combined magical auras turned the air visible.
Spells that could boil blood launched from dozens of hands simultaneously. Curses designed to rot flesh from the inside out, to turn bones to powder, to make organs liquefy. Even, hexes that could shatter minds, trap souls, rewrite memories until the target forgot they'd ever existed. All of it launched simultaneously in a coordinated assault that should have killed anything living.
One sorcerer, his face scarred from ritual sacrifice, screamed something in Latin, and fire erupted from his hands, purple and hot enough to melt steel.
Another, a woman with symbols carved into her skin, wove ice from nothing as frozen spears materialized and launched with enough force to puncture tank armor.
A third created a swarm of shadow creatures, things with too many teeth and not enough form, that rushed forward with hunger made manifest.
Jay's null field expanded to its maximum radius.
Combined with his Murasama-enhanced body and Kim Il Sung's evolved functionality manipulation, the effect was devastating.
Spells simply failed. They stopped working the moment they entered his field, their mystical frameworks falling apart. The fire died, and the ice shattered mid-flight, sublimating directly to vapor; even the shadow creatures dissolved into smoke.
Curses unraveled mid-flight, their dark purposes forgotten. Hexes dissolved into harmless light that sparkled and died. The concentrated magical assault of hundreds of trained sorcerers became nothing but wasted effort.
But Jay didn't stop there.
The first sorcerer reached him, hands still crackling with residual dark flames. The scarred man's eyes were wide with fanatical devotion, mouth open in a battle cry that praised Selene's name.
Jay's blade swept through the man's defenses like they didn't exist. Through his protective charms, which had protected him for decades, then through his reinforced robes and finally through his flesh.
The anti-magical edge cut clean. So clean the sorcerer didn't even realize he'd been bisected. He kept running for two more steps before the top half of his body slid away from the bottom. His scream cut short as shock killed him before blood loss could.
The second sorcerer, seeing his companion fall, tried to teleport away. Yellow light gathered around her as dimensional barriers began to thin, and escape was seconds away.
Jay's null field disrupted the portal mid-formation, and the dimensional gateway collapsed while the sorcerer was halfway through. The result was immediate and horrific. What remained couldn't be called a body anymore. Just poorly butchered meat.
The third sorcerer, the woman with carved symbols, managed to conjure a physical barrier. Stone and metal, nothing magical. This was the kind of defense that should have worked regardless of anti-magic properties.
Jay punched through it like cardboard. His Murasama-enhanced strength turned supposedly solid matter into powder. The barrier exploded inward, fragments catching the woman in the face and chest. She fell, bleeding from a dozen cuts, choking on blood and broken teeth.
Jay's boot brutally came down on her throat and crushed it, and she finally died gurgling.
Carnage spread outward from his position like wildfire through dry grass.
But the sorcerers kept coming. Suicidal in their devotion and fanatical beyond reason. Each death meant nothing because there were always more. Because Selene had promised them power, pleasure, immortality and whatever lies they needed to hear to surrender their humanity. And they believed her so completely that dying for her was an honor.
"For the Black Queen!" One of them screamed, throwing himself at Jay with bare hands when his magic failed.
Jay gutted him without breaking stride.
"Selene eternal!" Another cried, tears streaming down her face as she charged.
Her head left her shoulders before those tears could dry.
They died screaming her name, praising her and thanking her for the privilege of dying in her service. This kind of devotion transcended sanity and made death preferable to disobedience.
[A/N]: Support my work and get early access to chapters, exclusive content, and bonus material at my P@treon - Max_Striker.
If you wanna hang out, join my Discord server-https://discord.gg/DNY6u9cM