Tens of thousands of years ago, the Six-Faced World was devastated by war.
A war between gods.
Since each of the six gods of that era was a fragment of the Creation God's divinity, their power, as such, was perceived as nothing less than divine in nature.
Despite the countless mysteries surrounding the six original worlds, one thing was always engraved in the minds of all beings, whether they were humans, dragons, demons, or any other race: the absolute strength of the original gods stood in a category apart from the rest of existence.
They were not merely stronger, faster, or tougher. They were different in essence.
Unlike all other beings, who depended on mana to use magic, strengthen their bodies, and defy the limits of the world, the gods used a purer source of energy, one higher and more intrinsic to divinity itself.
And this manifested clearly in each of them in the form of a core.
A Divine Core.
That Divine Core was not merely the source of their divine power. It was also the source of their life.
And, because of its very nature, it was even more than that, for it was connected to the very world the god ruled over.
It was like their heart. Once destroyed, it would not only kill an ordinary living being, but also doom the world that depended on that divine existence.
And that was exactly why a war between gods was destined to become the greatest massacre seen since the dawn of the world.
No other war that followed surpassed its scale.
No other war surpassed its destruction.
And its beginning, as known, was caused by the most powerful of the gods, the Dragon God, after being manipulated by the most cunning of the gods, the Human God.
To avenge his deceased wife, Lunaria, the Dragon God led his Five Generals through the other worlds to demand a culprit.
The Beast World. The Sea World. The Heaven World. And finally, though after much longer, the Demon World.
Four Gods dead. Four Divine Cores stolen by the Dragon God. Four entire worlds destroyed amid his uncontrolled fury.
And his retainers, obviously, did not question his actions openly for even an instant until then. After all, he was their God.
The progenitor of their race. The absolute pinnacle of power. The very concept of betraying the one to whom they owed absolute loyalty was something so strange, so unnatural, that it would hardly cross their minds in any ordinary way.
Unless, of course, there was some kind of external interference.
In the end, the First Dragon God paid in kind for the destruction of the other worlds.
After being betrayed by his Five Generals, he himself had his own core stolen and destroyed by the most despicable of beings, or, to be more precise, by Hitogami.
Even so, while slowly walking toward death, the Dragon God still resisted.
Using the divine cores in his possession, he made his final preparations against the despicable being who had been behind everything from the very beginning.
The Divine Cores of the Sea God, the Heaven God, and the Demon God were used for all kinds of preparations aimed at a distant future, as a final hope against Hitogami.
And the Divine Core of the First Beast God...
He used it as an engine for himself.
Even on the verge of collapse, covered in wounds, betrayed, isolated, and at a disadvantage in terrain, he charged fiercely toward his final enemy, Hitogami.
Despite his reduced intellect and his remarkable hypocrisy, one simple truth still had to be admitted: only the First Dragon God was truly worthy of the title of the Most Powerful God.
Even centuries and millennia after his fall, there had not been a single being who truly came close to his overwhelming and oppressive power.
And, in reality, even reaching the power of any one of the other Original Gods was already an almost impossible task.
In the end, it was a touching story for some.
There would be those who would look at it and feel pity for the Dragon God, sympathizing with him for having been manipulated and led into a foolish crusade.
There would be those who would hate Hitogami for his perversity and for having used everyone as disposable pieces.
And there would also be those who would despise both equally, one as the maddened executioner, the other as the criminal mind behind it all, since both, forming a perfect pair of foolishness and perversity, were capable of causing extermination on a global scale multiple times.
Well, if there were true victims in that incident, they were certainly the four worlds destroyed by the Dragon Race.
It was not without reason that the Dragon Race became hated after arriving in the Human World.
It is interesting to observe what can happen when Fools and the Perverse are placed in power.
Now, one question still remained.
What would a Labyrinth of transcendent proportions become by replicating such a lamentable event?
Or, to be more precise, what interested Rygar most was something else.
What could exist on the Final Floor of the oldest Labyrinth in the world, the Dragon God's Hole, that would be capable of completely changing his level of power?
What would give him such a great leap that it would make him confident enough to kill even the so-called most powerful being in the world, Orsted?
While Eris did everything in her power to distract the two new guests, Badigadi and Vita, the Apocalypse Beast did everything in his power to reach his true objective.
The greatest treasure in the world. A treasure that had never before been obtained by anyone. Not even in Orsted's many loops.
Rygar was finally able to kill the final boss of the Labyrinth.
The false Dragon God.
The divine shell of the most powerful being ever to exist.
And the moment Doomsday finally consumed the entire demonic body of that monstrous being, the Labyrinth trembled.
The sky cracked. As if that small world were walking toward its end, and the final floor were acknowledging the death of its ruler.
And then, in place of the Dragon Shell, emerging amid Doomsday's bluish and purplish flames, which were taking over the mountain ranges, an immense and blinding radiance filled the floor.
It was not like Rygar's magic. It did not resemble a scorching sun.
It seemed more like a distant and brilliant star.
A small celestial body, but absurdly luminous, like a point of light capable of fitting in the palm of a hand, and yet radiating an overwhelming presence.
A hypnotic, pure, and dangerous yellow, white, and brown glow exuded from the most secret and most terrible treasure of the Six-Faced World.
A treasure of which not even Hitogami had knowledge.
After all, objects and beings of divine nature were, by essence, immune to divinations and magical gazes.
Rygar, behind the dark helm and the aura emitted by his armor, smiled broadly.
Happier than ever before.
Not only because he had managed to achieve his objective, but because Eris had performed splendidly.
She had dealt with two extremely dangerous opponents in a way even he had not judged possible.
Precisely because it was not a matter of refined strategies or impeccable logic, it worked.
Rygar could feel it in his bones.
He could feel the power of that object even before touching it.
The final treasure of the most dangerous labyrinth in the world.
The Incomplete Divine Core used by the First Dragon God in his final battle against Hitogami.
Although it was cracked and clearly incomplete, its power was, without a doubt, of a pure and divine nature.
A power that naturally extended outward and joined with the world spontaneously, as if it had been born to touch the very foundations of natural laws and command them.
The power to transcend the power of a mortal.
But Rygar did not have time to admire it in silence.
Eris had fulfilled her role splendidly, but she was gravely wounded.
Now, it was his turn.
His mana roared madly, his killing intent surging wildly.
Without waiting even another second, Rygar stretched out his hand.
And then it happened.
The Armor that Devours the Sun, Sköllvindr, absorbed its final component as if it had been waiting for it since its creation, as if, even before existing, that divine fragment had already been destined to compose its structure.
The glow of the Incomplete Divine Core wavered for an instant, as if recognizing the call, and then it was pulled into the armor in a stream of pure light.
There was no resistance, nor any visible shock. The fusion was frighteningly natural.
In the very next instant, Rygar felt power surge within his soul like never before.
The world around him changed.
Or, to be more precise, the way he perceived it changed.
Heat no longer seemed merely like heat and began to feel like an extension of himself. Gravity no longer seemed like an external force and began to behave like something tangible.
Space no longer seemed like an obstacle, but a malleable layer, as if all of reality had become clearer and more accessible.
His mana, once vast and monstrous, now seemed perfectly aligned with something above it, something that could not be described merely as quantity.
For one extremely brief instant, Rygar felt as if his body were being pulled toward a realm it should never reach.
Sköllvindr shone.
Now, the entire armor seemed crossed by thin lines of light, running along its black plates, giving it an even more terrible appearance.
Doomsday reacted immediately.
The sword let out a trembling laugh of satisfaction, and the bluish and purplish flames dancing around its blade became even more intense.
Rygar flexed his hand.
His Magic and Battle Aura, previously unified by force through technique and mastery, now seemed to mix in an even more intimate way, as if a third layer had been born above the two.
A superior state, closer to the divine. Not enough to make him forget that he was still a mortal, but enough for him to finally understand that he had touched a new limit.
The Armor had reached its complete form, the Sköllvindr Armor, Divine Model.
Rygar breathed deeply, his heart beating like a war drum.
Blood ran through his body like molten metal, and his Demon Eyes seemed clearer than ever.
Every particle of dust, every fissure in the ground of the inverted mountains, every distant vibration produced by the clash between Eris, Vita, and Badigadi, all reached his mind with clarity.
He looked at his own hand.
Then at Doomsday.
Then into the distance, toward where Eris had been thrown.
His smile diminished.
Happiness did not blind him for even an instant, for he knew that now his fight would truly begin.
And the world around them was falling apart at a maddening speed.
The cracked sky above the final floor was collapsing.
The inverted mountains were rapidly turning into dust before infinity.
The last flames of the false Dragon God still burned in several points of the scenery.
Rygar took a step.
The ground beneath his feet collapsed and sank.
And then, without wasting even another second of that newly acquired power, he shot toward Eris's battle.
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