He knew everything.
He knew nothing.
As the corpse of the Primary Goddess of Time collapsed on the ground, her time stasis came undone.
Her servants, lesser gods and heroes were shocked at first, but then they did not hesitate to attack Morphus, who proceeded to skewer each one with a single stab from his tentacle wings.
Each tentacle wing delivered a lethal curse, it was nowhere near enough to kill a primary god, but against lesser gods and heroes, it was more than enough.
How did he acquire those curses? He knew but he also had absolutely no idea…
Morphus remembered.
He remembered everything.
Meeting his future self… and what came after.
Most of the memories were his but some were not his….
The Grand Rewind….
In theory, it was similar to what the Dark Lord was afflicted with, but with a few differences.
The Ouroboros seal could only send memories back, and only over a limited range.
Grand Rewind, on the other hand, allowed one to send lifetimes worth of…. everything
All the memories, experiences, several lifetimes worth of knowledge, expertise, preparation, formulas, seals, the sheer amount of information was nauseating…
But that was not all. It also allowed one to send any ability or power acquired in the future.
Of course, because the past self would be lower level than the future sender self, the potency of the acquired power will be far reduced, but the past self will acquire the ability to use the power long before they would have otherwise.
But such a grand alteration of fate came at a steep cost. It could not be cast alone. If two people were to cast it, one would receive all the information and power, but the other one would be erased from existence, their past self will cease to exist, and the future versions naturally would also cease to be.
Morphus was horrified.
Just how many times….just how many iterations…
7, 10, no, the previous one was the 12th...
And now, his current self was the 13th, the final attempt.
So much information. 12 lifetimes worth of his own and several not his own, so much that he could drown in it.
He desperately buried his thoughts, forcing himself to focus on the present.
Due to his future self implanting something in his subconscious, when he saw Chronos, something else took over. Somehow, he knew exactly what he needed to do.
By absorbing the Ouroboros blessing and reverse engineering it, he managed to gain immunity to Chronos's time stop magic. Figuring out how the magic worked, creating the formula to use the pre-existing blessing and modifying it, it clearly took a long time to do, but thanks to the Grand Rewind, the necessary magical formula was already hidden within Morphus's mind.
The crystal dagger…it's unique attributes were due to being made of angelic flesh and bone, a rudimentary contraption at its best, it could never match the genuine article.
If one knew the technique, an angel could use the exact same power to transfer blessings. As twisted and involuntary as it was, what Dark Lord had was not a curse, but a divine blessing.
If tweaked just slightly, it's effect could be altered to a certain degree, allowing it to be used against the one who granted it. Fighting fire with fire, in a sense. Essentially, he repurposed it.
Since Morphus, as an angel, did not have a soul, he could not use the original mental time travel aspect of the blessing, but he could mold the blessing to gain resistance, essentially a partial shielding from time stop magic.
Still, the blessing could not be stolen or modified until it matured enough. It took time, but after Dark Lord used that blessing countless times, it matured enough to be of use.
The moment Dark Lord was taken down by Chronos, he knew he only had an instant to do it. However, with the magical formula already inside his mind, this was not an issue. Clearly, someone was very prepared.
Then it was a matter of making Chronos let her guard down and get in close and striking her down once she was within a certain range.
Among angels, there is a certain martial art that can only be performed by them. Essentially, it comes down to rapidly unsheathing a wing, releasing it like a blade or a spear, striking the target before they have a chance to see it coming. In a sense, it was much like a quick draw technique with a katana, but performed with a wing.
For most winged species, performing this move is impossible due to fragility of their wings, but angels were an exception. Their wings were by far, the toughest part of their body, an archangel's wing is said to be tough enough to break Adamantite.
Still, just a slash or a stab with a wing would be nowhere enough to put a Primary Goddess down, so the key must be….
Curses. Anything that originates from a God was classified as a blessing, even if it was something not beneficial and even actively harmful, but curses, those were things that originated from Devils, the denizens of Hell.
From his memories, he knew that curses were especially effective against gods, but how did his future self acquire them?
Due to being under-leveled, and only having a few dozen curses at his disposal, he only had enough to restrain Chronos and make her vulnerable for a short amount of time. But during that short window of opportunity, she could be killed.
After cutting off her head, he pulverized it, crushing her brain, and at the same time destroying her heart. Even with all the curses he inflicted on her which disabled any auto-revival or any type of self-resurrective items or spells, he still could not be too cautious.
The sheer amount of information was driving him insane…he knew he would have far more troubles up ahead….yet, none of that currently mattered.
But he had much bigger concerns at hand.
Dark Lord… Runfar Sevilles…. Nur Finnerman…. his best friend was fading…
His body was fluctuating between existence and non-existence.
And Morphus was powerless to stop it.
Dark Lord: "You killed Chronos?"
Morphus: "I did"
Dark Lord: "It was you… the Mastermind behind it all… It was you all along"
After seeing Morphus's red right eye and the familiar aura coming from him, Dark Lord knew for certain. This was the very same aura that was watching him from the shadows this whole time.
Morphus: "I did not know"
It was the truth. As twisted as it was.
Dark Lord: "Of course you did not. That was how far he… the other you was willing to go"
He chuckled. For someone who was fading away, he still had a sense of humor to spare.
Dark Lord: "I am glad it was you, though. If it was anyone else, I could not bear it. But if it's you, I am ok with it"
Dark Lord had known Morphus long enough that he could tell, that Morphus was in fact, without a doubt, someone who was just like him.
Just like Dark Lord made his life's mission to kill Chronos, Morphus's life mission was to kill someone else. For him, killing Chronos was just a necessary stepping stone, not his main objective.
Dark Lord did not envy the one who incurred the wrath of this dark angel.
Dark Lord: "You are something else, you know? Thank you…I am proud to call you my friend….. My only regret is not getting to see my master and my son, one last time…."
Whatever will that held his form together was gone, and Dark Lord was no more.
Not even a body remained of him.
Morphus knew everything but also knew nothing.
He remembered things that did not happen, or more like no longer happened, conversations he never had, experiments, conclusions… all kinds of information he should have never had access to, but somehow, he did.
He no longer knew what was real and what was not.
Only that the goddess of time lay dead before him and with it, Solaris's reset button was gone.
Without her time manipulation, Chronos was by far the weakest of this world's primary gods. With what little he had now, he had no hope of defeating gods.
He needed more power. It would take a while, but he had the time to spare, he could always acquire more….
The one who killed Zephyr would get a fate worse than death….as his guinea pig…
He manipulated every step of the game but he himself was just one of the chess pieces.
His future self was responsible for everything that happened, but the present him was now responsible as well.
Morphus was not sure who he was anymore.
Was he his future selves inside the body of his past self, or was he the present self with the memories of his future selves….
He understood, everyone was a means to an end…but…how could he do this? They were all his friends, family, loved ones… and he just used them as stepping stones.
Never did Morphus hate himself more than he did now.
The gods must die…. Solaris must fall…. who am I?
I am sorry…. I am so sorry… I am so sorry…
Not even a corpse was left of his friend. With Chronos dead, the Ouroboros blessing had vanished into nothingness. This was the Dark Lord's final end.
Morphus fell on his knees and wept. How much of his current self was him and how much was his future self, he did not know, and he did not care.
Right now, he could only grieve for the best friend he just lost.